E 



THIRTEEN 
HISTORICAL 
AVARINE 
PAINTINGS 

BY 

EDWARD MORAN 

REPRESENTING 

THIRTEEN CHAPTtRS 

OF ' 

AMERICAN HISTORY 




By THEODORE SUTRO 
1905 





PRF,.SI5NTI-:i) BY 




Copyri„'M, 1903, by Tl.c.aorc S,.iro. 

EDWARD MORAN 

From a paiiUinK by Thomas Sidney Moran 



THIRTEEN CHAPTERS 



O F 



AMERICAN HISTORY 



REPRESENTED 

BY THE 

EDWARD MORAN 

SERIES OF 

THIRTEEN HISTORICAL 
MARINE PAINTINGS 




By THEODORE SUTRO 

1905 '^ 









Copyright, 1905, by Theodore Sutro 



C.^^ 






To 

My Dear Wife 

FLORENCE 

THROUGH WHOSE STEADFAST FRIENDSHIP FOR 
MR. AND MRS. EDWARD MORAN AND LOYAL DE- 
VOTION TO ME, I WAS LED TO CHAMPION, AND 
ENCOURAGED TO PERSEVERE IN ESTABLISHING, 
THE RIGHTS OF THE WIDOW TO THESE MASTER- 
WORKS, WITHOUT WHICH THE OCCASION FOR 
PENNING THESE PAGES WOULD NOT HAVE ARISEN 
— THIS LITTLE WORK IS LOVINGLY INSCRIBED, 
ON THE 

twentieth anniversary of our marriage, 
October ist, 1904. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

Page. 

Frontispiece — Portrait of Edward Moran, from a painting by 
Thomas Sidney Moran 

Introductory 7 

Biographical 15 

Portrait of Mrs. Edward Moran, from a painting by 

Thomas Sidney Moran .... Facing page 20 
Descriptive and E.xplanatory : 

I. The Ocean — The Highway of All Nations ... 27 

II. Landing of Lief Erickson in the New World in 

THE Year iooi 33 

III. The Santa Maria, Nina and Pinta (Evening of October 
nth, 1492) 39 

IV. The Debarkation of Columbus (Morning of October 

i2th, 1492) 39 

V. Midnight Mass on the Mississippi, over the Body of 

Ferdinand De Soto, 1542 47 

VI. Henry Hudson Entering New York Bay, September 

nth, 1609 53 

VII. Embarkation of the Pilgrims from Southampton, 
August 5th, 1620 ........ 59 

VIII. First Recognition of the American Flag by a 
Foreign Government. In the Harbor of Quiberon, 
France, February 13th, 1778 67 

IX. Burning of the Frigate Philadelphia. In the Har- 

bor of Tripoli, February i6th, 1804 .... 73 

X. The Brig Armstrong Engaging the British Fleet. 

In the Harbor of Fayal, September 26th, 1814 . . 79 

XI. Iron versus Wood — Sinking of the Cumberland by 

the Merrimac. In Hampton Roads, March 8th, 1862 . 87 

XII. The White Squadron's Farewell Salute to the 
Body of Captain John Ericsson, New York Bay, 
August 25th, 1890 . . , 95 

XIII. Return of the Conqueror.s. Typifying Our Victory 

in the late Spanish-American War, September 2Qth, 1899. 105 
Index • . . . in 



INTRODUCTORY 




INTRODUCTORY. 

The Thirteen Paintings, to a history and description of 
which (and incidentally to a brief memoir of their 
creator, Edward Moran) these pages are devoted, are 
monumental in their character and importance. Mr. 
Moran designated them as representing the " Marine 
History of the United States." I have somewhat changed 
this title ; for even the untraversed " Ocean " and the 
landing of Columbus in the new world represent periods 
which necessarily affect the whole American Continent. 

The conception of these pictures was in itself a mark 
of genius, for no more fitting subjects could have been 
chosen by the greatest marine painter in the United States 
than the heroic and romantic incidents connected with 
the sea, which are so splendidly depicted in these thirteen 
grand paintings. That their execution required over 
fifteen years of ceaseless labor and the closest historical 
study is not surprising. The localities, the ships, the 
armament, the personages, the costumes, the weapons and 
all the incidents connected with each epoch are minutely 
and correctly represented, in so far as existing records 
rendered that possible. And yet, interwoven with each 
canvas, is a tone so poetic and imaginative that stamps 
it at once as the offspring of genius and lifts it far above 
the merely photographic and realistic. The series is the 
result of a life of prolific production, careful study, un- 
ceasing industry and great experience. 

Mr. Moran himself regarded these pictures as his 
crowning work, and in token of his many happy years of 

7 



married life presented them, several years before his 
death, to his wife, Annette Moran, herself an artist of 
great merit, and whom he always mentioned as his best 
critic and the inspirer of his greatest achievements. This 
loving act, strange to say, gave rise to a protracted legal 
controversy, by reason of an adverse claim to these paint- 
ings made by the executor of the estate of Edward 
Moran, the final decision of which in favor of the widow, 
after three years of litigation, lends additional interest to 
these remarkable works of art. Proceedings to recover 
the pictures from the executor of the estate, who had 
them in his possession and refused to deliver them to her, 
were commenced on February 5, 1902, and after a trial 
in the Supreme Court in the City of New York lasting 
several days, a jury decided that the pictures were the 
property of the widow as claimed. On a technical point 
of law raised by the executor this finding of the jury was 
temporarily rendered ineffective, but, on an appeal to the 
Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, this technicality 
was overruled and an absolute judgment awarded in 
favor of the widow.* This was on January 23, 1903. 
Still not content, the executor appealed to the highest 
court in the State, the Court of Appeals at Albany, which, 
on January 26, 1904, finally and absolutely affirmed the 
decision of the Appellate Division.-]- But even then the 
widow was kept out of her property on further applica- 
tions made by the executor to the court. Also in this he 
failed, and at last, on April 28, 1904, the judgment in her 
favor was satisfied through the delivery of the pictures 
to her, as her absolute property, beyond dispute, cavil or 
further question. 

I have deemed it proper to make this explanation, as it 
is through my connection as counsel for Mrs. Moran 
throughout this litigation that the occasion has presented 

* Moran v. Morrill, 78 Appellate Division Reports, 440. 
f Moran v. Morrill, 177 New York Reports, 563. 
8 



itself for this publication, and of giving to the public the 
opportunity to examine and enjoy, to the fullest extent, 
these great pictures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

It may be added that although these paintings have 
occasionally been viewed by artists, they have never be- 
fore been publicly exhibited as a series except for a very 
short period in the year 1900 in Philadelphia and in Wash- 
ington. During this time they received the highest en- 
comiums from critics and the press, and were pronounced 
the most notable series of historic pictures ever painted 
in this country. While each one of the series is a master 
work, it is as a group that the greatest interest attaches 
to them, and it was Mr. Moran's desire, and it is also 
that of the present owner, that they should, if possible, 
never be separated. 

With reference to the exhibition of these paintings at 
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I quote from a full 
page illustrated article which appeared in the New York 
Herald on Sunday, November 6, 1904, as follows : 

" The exhibition of these pictures of scenes connected 
with the history of the United States is not only an artistic 
but an educational event. Edward Moran was probably 
the strongest marine painter of the United States. 
* * * No more artistically valuable and educationally 
instructive exhibit has been made in New York than that 
of these paintings of Edward Moran. It is to be hoped 
that the school children of the city will be taken to see 
and study them. The public has already testified to its 
appreciation of the exhibition by its large attendance." 

It may be asked why the artist limited or extended the 
series to the number " 13." This was done with a pur- 
pose. This number seems to have been interwoven in 
many particulars with the history of our country. The 
original colonies were thirteen, and also the first States ; 
the first order for the creation of a navy was for thirteen 
war ships; there were and still are thirteen stripes, and 

9 



there were originally thirteen stars, on our flag ; on our 
coat of arms a mailed hand grasps thirteen arrows, 
as do also the left talons of the eagle, while in its right 
is an olive branch with thirteen leaves; there were also 
thirteen rattles on the snake on the first American flag, 
with the motto " Don't tread on me." It was on February 
13, 1778, in the harbor of Quiberon, that the American 
flag received its first recognition by a foreign government, 
an incident represented by one of these paintings ; thirteen 
years elapsed between the Declaration of Independence in 
1776 and the inauguration of the first President, General 
Washington, in 1789; and the Louisiana purchase from 
France includes the area prospectively covered by thirteen 
States, as soon as Oklahoma and Indian Territories shall, 
as is now in contemplation, be admitted as one State. 

This idea of thirteen is already foreshadowed in the 
introductory painting " The Ocean," in which thirteen 
gulls are seen hovering over the water, typical of the 
important events, linked with that number, which would 
occur in the misty and unknown future. 

It is remarkable that although these paintings are by 
one man, and virtually on the same subject, they should 
exhibit such unusual variety, and be individually so ex- 
ceptionally interesting. It has been said that historic 
pictures may be considered as either representative, sug- 
gestive or allegoric, but in this series of paintings all 
these elements are combined. 

The American navy has been celebrated for its heroic 
achievements from the beginning, and some of these pict- 
ures recall vividly to the mind the episodes linked with 
the immortal names of such men as John Paul Jones, 
Stephen Decatur, Samuel Chester Reid, George U. 
Morris, John L. Worden, and the whole galaxy of heroes 
connected with these memorable events down to Dewey, 
Sampson, Schley, Wainwright and Hobson. 

The production of these paintings was the result of a 



patriotic and noble impulse on the part of the artist, 
through which he has immortalized the maritime achieve- 
ments of our country, and for which we, as well as future 
generations, can hardly be sufficiently grateful ! 

" If thou wouldst touch the universal heart, 
Of thine own country, sing ! " 



BIOGRAPHICAL 




T. S. M. 



BIOGRAPHICAL. 

Edward Moran was almost seventy-two years of age 
when he died in the City of New York on June 9, 1901, 
having been born at Bolton, Lancashire, England, on 
August 19, 1829. He was the oldest son of a large family 
of children, and when a mere child was put to work at the 
loom, the humble vocation of his father who, the same 
as his ancestors had been for several generations, was a 
hand-loom weaver. Already while so employed the child 
was frequently caught sketching with charcoal on the 
white fabric in his loom instead of continually plying the 
shuttle. Whence and how he derived this inborn talent 
is one of those unsolvable problems which seem to set at 
defiance all the accepted canons of heredity. At all 
events, his talent was recognized by a local village celeb- 
rity, a decorator, who guided the child, then only nine 
years of age, in a crude way to a development of these 
artistic instincts, in consequence of which it is related that 
he was soon able to '' cut marvellous figures from paper 
and afterwards draw their outlines on walls and fences." 

The hardship of their pursuit, offering little hope of 
a brighter future for their large family of growing 
children, induced the parents about the year 1844 to join 
the tide of emigration to that land of golden promise, 
the United States, in immortalizing whose history and in 
furthering whose artistic development through his glori- 
ous marine pictures, the little Edward was destined to 
play so important a part. The family settled in Mary- 
land, and in the struggle for existence soon awakened 

15 



from their golden dream of a new Eldorado and returned 
to their old vocation. Edward again found employ- 
ment at the loom, until the spirit of adventure and the 
desire of following the artistic bent of his mind impelled 
him one day, without a dollar in his pocket, to walk all 
the way to Philadelphia, where the boy hoped to find 
better opportunities. There also, however, he was dis- 
appointed, and after employment in various capacities, 
first with a cabinetmaker, then in a bronzing shop, and 
then at house painting, he finally returned to the loom at 
the munificent salary of six dollars per week. While so 
employed he attracted the attention of the proprietor, 
who one day surprised him while engaged in a superb 
drawing, stealing time for this purpose from his work. 
The intelligence of this man in recognizing young 
Moran's exceptional talent, and, as a result, advising him 
to quit mechanical labor, and introducing him to one of 
the then famous landscape painters of Philadelphia, Mr. 
Paul Webber, was the turning point in his career. Sub- 
sequently another artist, James Hamilton, guided him in 
his particular bent of marine painting, and after the usual 
hardships and struggle for recognition, the fate of all 
young artists, he finally was enabled to open a little studio 
in a garret over a cigar store with an entrance up a back 
alley. The works which emanated from there attracted 
such wide attention that he gradually rose to fame and 
fortune. His pictures were accepted by all the American 
academies, as well as the London Royal Academy and 
the Paris Salon, and he received many medals and 
awards. He was a member of the Water-Color Societies 
of this country and of London, of the Philadelphia 
Academy of Fine Arts, an Associate of the National 
Academy of Design, also Vice-President of the Lotos 
Club and connected with many other artistic and social 
organizations and societies. 

Why his artistic tastes should have been particularly 

I6 



directed to marine painting can be demonstrated just as 
little as the possession of his extraordinary talents at all ; 
and yet for the former a possible solution may be found 
in the fact that his childish imagination and predilections 
may have been moulded through his sea-coast experiences 
in old Lancashire, that picturesque maritime county of 
northwestern England, which is bounded on the west by 
the Irish Sea. At all events Edward Moran loved the 
sea, and this love guided every stroke of his brush in 
depicting his favorite element. No artist in this country, 
or perhaps in the world, has ever painted such water, 
and it was not many years after his first successes in 
Philadelphia that his fame spread throughout the United 
States, and he was easily recognized as its first marine 
painter. Fame and prosperity, however, did not turn his 
head, as they so frequently do with little men, but never 
with men of true genius. On the contrary, he worked 
with redoubled zeal and industry as he grew older, so 
that the number of works which he produced is mar- 
vellous. 

Among his famous paintings, besides the thirteen 
herein described, may be mentioned the following: 

" Virginia Sands." 

" A Squally Day off Newport." 

" Massachusetts Bay." 

" New York Harbor." 

" The Yacht Race." 

" The Battle of Svold." 

" Philadelphia from the New Park." 

" Minot's Ledge Light-House." 

" White Cliffs of Albion." 

" Off Block Island." 

" Return of the Fishers." 

" Outward Bound." 

" Low Tide." 

" The Gathering Storm." 

17 



'* Sentinel Rock, Maine." 

" Toilers of the Sea." 

" Launching of the Life-Boat." (1865.) 

" View on Delaware Bay." (1867.) 

"Evening on Vineyard Sound." (1867.) 

"Pinchyn Castle, North Wales." (1867.) 

*' Moonrise at Nahant." (1867.) 

" The Lord Staying the Waters." (1867.) 

" Coast Scene Near Digby." (1868.) 

" Departure of the United States Fleet for Port 
Royal." (1868.) 

" After a Gale." (1869.) 

" On the Narrows." (1873.) 

" The Commerce of Nations Paying Homage to 
Liberty " (1877) — the great picture which came into the 
possession of 'Mr. Joseph Drexel, the banker — an allegory 
suggested by the then proposed Statue of Liberty in New 
York Harbor. 

"Young Americans out on a Holiday." (1882.) 

"Life-Saving Patrol: New Jersey Coast." (1889.) 

" Melodies of the Sea." (1890.) 

" South Coast of England." (1900.) 

But space forbids the complete enumeration of even his 
more notable works, which may be counted by the 
hundreds. 

Mr. Moran, like all men of genius, felt his own 
strength, though he never overrated it ; but as a result of 
this self-consciousness he would not brook depreciation, 
and when, in May, 1868, the Philadelphia Academy of 
Fine Arts, of which he was a member, had hung some of 
his pictures in an inconspicuous and detrimental position 
in its gallery, he resorted to a novel expedient for show- 
ing his displeasure. On " varnishing day," prior to the 
opening of the exhibition to the public, he used a mixture 
of beer and porter, combined with a dry light red, for 
the purpose of " varnishing " his paintings, but the effect 



of which was that they were all coated with a beautiful 
opaque red substance, so that none of them could be 
recognized, and yet a substance which he could remove, 
when so inclined, without injuring the pictures at all. 
This called forth a storm of criticism from the " Hanging 
Committee " and the wiseacres of the Academy, but he 
was fully sustained in his course by public opinion and 
the press, and, instead of diminishing, it added to his 
fame as an artist and certainly to his reputation for the 
courage of his convictions, 

Mr. Moran was not only a great artist, but a man of 
genial and companionable qualities, which endeared him 
to all with whom he came in contact. He, furthermore, 
was not only an artist who used oil, water-color and pastel 
with equal facility, and painted landscapes and figure 
pieces as well as marines, but was versatile in his talents. 
His musical instincts were marked, and, although self- 
taught, he played on a number of instruments, and he had 
also, through years of industrious reading and study, be- 
come thoroughly well-informed and an interesting con- 
versationalist. He was of a most generous nature, and 
was not only ever ready to assist young artists with advice 
and material aid as well, but also, when the occasion 
arose, to devote the fruit of his labors to any meritorious 
charitable object. Thus, for example, in March, 1871, 
he exhibited in Philadelphia seventy-five of his landscapes 
and marines, all of which he used in illustrating a beauti- 
ful catalogue entitled " Land and Sea," and not only gave 
the entire profits of this exhibition and of the sale of the 
catalogue, but also the price obtained for one of his im- 
portant paintings, entitled " The Relief Ship Entering 
Havre," to aid the sufferers of the Franco-Prussian war. 

He did not reach the culminating point of excellence 
in his work in middle life or shortly thereafter, like so 
many other painters, but on the contrary grew in breadth 
and power with advancing years, so that the Thirteen 

»9 



Historical Paintings, described in this little book, although 
he gave them the finishing touches only shortly before his 
death, constitute his greatest achievement. 

About the year 1872 Mr. Moran sought a still wider 
field for his activities in removing from Philadelphia to 
the City of New York, where for thirty years he was a 
conspicuous and admired figure in metropolitan life, and 
in his studios, surrounded by all the luxury and comfort 
that prosperity could suggest, he and his talented and 
hospitable wife drew around them a circle of artists, 
authors, musicians and notable men of all classes, among 
whom may be mentioned actors like Joseph Jefferson, F. 
F. Mackay (both pupils of Mr. Moran) and Charles W. 
Couldock, writers like Richard Watson Gilder and John 
Clark Ridpath, lawyers like Col. Edward C. James and 
Robert Ingersoll, art connoisseurs like Samuel P. Avery 
and William Schaus, sculptors like Frederic A. Bartholdi 
and James W. A. Macdonald, and of course a host of 
artists such as Edwin Abbey, Albert Bierstadt, Edwin H. 
Blashfield, John C. Brown, Thomas B. Craig, Hamilton 
Hamilton, Constant Meyer, Paul de Longpre, Henry W. 
Ranger, Vasili Vereschagin and Napoleon Sarony. 

It may be added that Mrs. Moran's maiden name was 
Annette Parmentier, and that she was a Southern girl of 
French descent from the noted scientist Antoine Augus- 
tin Parmentier, who was the first to introduce the potato 
into France, for which he was decorated by Louis XVI as 
a public benefactor, and honored by a statue erected in his 
native town of Bordeaux. Mr. Moran married Annette 
(his second wife) in the year 1869, and under his instruc- 
tion and guidance her own talent as an artist was devel- 
oped, and some of her paintings, among them landscapes 
entitled " A Staten Island Study," " The Fisherman's Re- 
turn," and other pictures, were not only exhibited and 
greatly admired, but were deemed of sufficient importance 
to be reproduced by prominent art publishers. She sur- 

20 




Cupyriijht. 1905, by Theodore Sutro. 



MRS. EDWARD MORAN 

(nI'lE ANNETTE TAKMENTIEU) 

From a painting by TlKimas Sidney Moran 



vived her husband by about three and one-half years, 
having died, at an advanced age, in the City of New- 
York on November 7, 1904. 

In his art Mr. Moran followed mainly the bent of his 
own genius, though if he was influenced by any other 
artists to any extent it was by Clarkson Stanfield and 
Turner, whom he greatly admired and many of whose 
pictures, for the sake of practice, he copied. He was un- 
doubtedly also influenced in a general way, as are all 
eminent artists, by studying the master works of the world 
in Europe, where for that purpose he spent some time in 
the year 1861 and again in 1878 and also in subsequent 
years. 

Of Edward Moran it may be truly said that he is an- 
other notable example of the fact that true genius is not 
baffled or impaired through adverse circumstances or the 
most humble beginnings, but soars ever upward and on- 
ward until it achieves its mission, and compels the recog- 
nition and admiration of the world, to which it is entitled. 

21 



DESCRIPTIVE 

AND 

EXPLANATORY 




T. S. M 



THE OCEAN 

The Highway of All Nations 



DESCRIPTIVE AND EXPLANATORY. 

I. 

THE OCEAN — THE HIGHWAY OF ALL NATIONS.* 

This picture has already been briefly referred to, and 
is considered by some critics the greatest of the thirteen. 
Probably no such sublime ocean has ever been painted. 
How thoroughly it appeals to those who best know the 
sea is illustrated by the blunt but expressive compliment 
bestowed upon it by Admiral Hopkins of the English 
navy when, in 1892, he saw it in the Union League Club 
of New York, where it was being privately shown. After 
silently studying it for some minutes he turned to Mr. 
Joseph H. Choate, whose guest he was, and said : " I have 
always believed that only an Englishman could paint the 
sea, but it seems that I had to come to America to look 
upon the most almighty sea that I have ever beheld on 
canvas." 

Admiral Hopkins was not aware that, in this, he was 
in fact complimenting one of his own fellow-countrymen, 
though, in truth, Mr. Moran had become an American of 
Americans through his patriotic ardor and long residence 
here. 

In this painting the powers of Mr. Moran as an artist 
were tested to the utmost. For while others have at- 

* Size of canvas : nine and one-half feet in length by six and one- 
quarter feet in height. 

27 



tempted to paint the sea, among whom Turner stands pre- 
eminent, few have ever succeeded in depicting it on so 
large a scale, without a single other object to disturb the 
aspect excepting only the thirteen sea-gulls hovering over 
its surface, which through their number suggest the 
whole series of these paintings and the interesting events 
connected with the marine history of the United States. 

This picture is the largest of the series. Not only the 
water but the sky in this painting is superb, with the faint 
shimmer of the sunlight breaking through the clouds. 
The color is that peculiar green gray, which is the most 
fascinating hue known to the sea, and only present when 
the sky is overcast. The water and the motion of the 
waves are grand beyond comparison — an actual living, 
moving, foaming mass and as seen in mid-ocean. The 
conception of this painting as introductory to the whole 
series is most poetic. It suggests the deep, dark, dreaded, 
unknown waste of waters which was shrouded in mystery 
for thousands of years until a few daring seamen, first 
the Norsemen, and then Columbus with his little band, 
undertook the perilous task of lifting the veil. Its un- 
explored expanse naturally and logically preceded every 
voyage of discovery and is the keynote of all the marvel- 
lous achievements which subsequently constituted it the 
link between America and the Eastern world. It also 
typifies the greatest of all republics, which was to spring 
up beyond its westernmost limits, for nothing is so free, 
unfettered and seemingly conscious of its own strength 
and possibilities as the mighty ocean. 

This painting may be likened to the opening stanzas of 
an epic poem, in which the theme of the story is fore- 
shadowed, and no grander epic was ever written than is 
depicted in these thirteen mighty paintings, of all those 
qualities of heroism and adventure which have ever been 
thought worthy of commemoration in song or story. 

How well the ^amous stanzas of Lord Byron, in Childe 

28 



Harold's Pilgrimage, illustrate the thoughts suggested 
by this '* Ocean " of Edward Moran : 

" Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean — roll ! 
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain ; 
Man marks the earth with ruin — his control 
Stops with the shore ; — upon the watery plain 
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain 
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, 
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain. 
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, 
Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown. 

" Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form 
Glasses itself in tempests ; in all time. 
Calm or convulsed — in breeze, or gale, or storm. 
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime 
Dark-heaving ; — boundless, endless and sublime — 
The image of Eternity — the throne 
Of the Invisible ; even from out thy slime 
The monsters of the deep are made ; each zone 
Obeys thee ; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone." 

29 



LANDING OF LIEF ERICKSON 
in the New World in looi 



II. 

LANDING OF LIEF ERICKSON IN THE NEW WORLD, IN lOOI.* 

While the most notable occurrence in its influence on 
America was undoubtedly the landing of Columbus, as 
it resulted in the gradual colonization and development 
of the whole continent, the actual discovery of the new 
world was made ages prior to 1492. The landing of Lief 
Erickson was made in lOOi, but there is good reason to 
believe that even long prior to that time either the shores 
or the islands of America were reached by Phoenicians, 
Irish and Basques, and its western shores by the Chinese, 
The earliest discovery, however, of which there is any 
authenticated record is that by the Eirek (Erick) family 
of Iceland, and these records are not only embraced in 
the Sagas or histories of the Scandinavian chieftains, but 
more especially in the " Codex Flataeensis," completed in 
1387. Acording to these, Eirek the Red founded col- 
onies in Greenland about the year 985, which prospered 
for over four centuries. Remains of buildings and con- 
temporaneous writings establish this beyond a doubt. 
These colonies became Christianized and established 
churches, monasteries, and had bishops in regular suc- 
cession for about two hundred and fifty years. There is 
nothing marvellous about this account, as Greenland was 
only about two hundred miles distant from Iceland, and 
therefore nearer to that island than the latter was to 
Norway, whence the Icelanders originally came. These 
* About six feet long by about three and one-half feet high. 
33 



colonies became practically extinct in the fourteenth 
century, owing, it is believed, to enormous accumulations 
of ice on the coast, which prevented intercommunication 
between them and Iceland, and cut off their chief food 
supplies. They may also have been decimated through 
the great pestilence called the Black Death, which pre- 
vailed in 1349, especially in the northern countries; while, 
if any remained, they are supposed to have been killed 
by the Esquimos, or Skraehngs, as they were then called, 
and who were a far more powerful race than the 
Esquimos of to-day. 

The foothold thus gained by the Norsemen in Green- 
land led to voyages southward. Some years after the 
establishment of these colonies one Bjarne Herjulfson 
was on one of these voyages driven by a storm far south 
of Greenland and saw the coast of the main continent of 
North America, somewhere, it is supposed from his de- 
scription, between Newfoundland and Nantucket. With- 
out landing, he returned to Greenland, whence soon there- 
after, induced by his accounts, Leif, the son of Eirek the 
Red, undertook the same journey with a single ship and 
about thirty-five men, for the purpose of obtaining pos- 
session of the newly discovered country. He landed 
probably at Nantucket Island, and settled in the vicinity 
of the present Fall River, and called the country Vinland 
on account of the grape-vines which grew there in pro- 
fusion. 

In confirmation of the claim that it was in this locality 
that Leif Erickson first set foot, the Norse records are 
relied upon, which state that, at the season when this 
discovery was made, the sun rose at 7 :30 a.m. and set 
at 4:30 P.M. This astronomical observation would 
locate the place of landing on the southern coast of 
New England in the vicinity mentioned. That the 
Norsemen made a settlement in this country, though only 
of brief duration, is a fact in support of which many 

34 



learned treatises have been written, dealing, among other 
things, with what are supposed to be Icelandic inscrip- 
tions discovered in that section of the country, and the 
like, a consideration of which, however, would be beyond 
the scope of this writing. 

Leif, the son of Eirek, or to preserve the nomenclature 
of the artist. Lief Erickson, is described in the Sagas and 
other records as a large, strong man, of imposing appear- 
ance. The ships in which voyages were made by the 
Norsemen in those days were called drakkars, which were 
propelled both by oar and sail ; at the ends rose wooden 
apartments called kastals. All the parts out of water 
were fashioned after the manner of monsters or drakkars 
(dragons, Drachcn). The prow of the ship represented 
the terrible head, the sides, a continuation of the body, 
and the rear, the tail of the monster bent upward ; they 
bore a single sail covered with warlike paintings, and to 
the mast were also frequently hoisted the coats of arms 
of various chiefs. It was in ships of this character that 
these bold seamen braved the perils of the ocean, and it 
was in similar ships that William, the Conqueror, came 
to England ; and yet even these vessels, frail as they were, 
were superior, both in seaworthiness and size, to the ships 
of Columbus. 

The costumes of the Norsemen consisted of trousers, 
belt, shirt, and often a coat of mail, and over the shoulders 
they sometimes wore a cloak with a fringe or border at 
the sides. They carried swords with most elaborately 
carved and embossed hilts and scabbards of gilt bronze 
and silver. 

To depict the first landing of Lief Erickson amid these 
surroundings was the object of the painter. How well 
he has succeeded, a mere inspection of this canvas will at 
once reveal. The heroic figure of Lief, himself, dreamily 
and yet with wonderment, looking out upon the newly 
discovered shore, while with uplifted sword his men are 

35 



apparently consecrating the new world with a solemn vow 
of loyalty, some standing on a small boat which is being 
pushed towards the shore, while others stand knee-deep 
in the shoal water — the form of the ship or drakkar in 
the background, the costumes, swords and all the other 
accessories — constitute a striking and fascinating group. 
It portrays vividly the solemnity of the occasion when 
the first white men were about to set foot on the American 
continent. 

The discovery of Vinland and its subsequent coloniza- 
tion by Thorfinn are referred to in the beautiful verses 
of Bayard Taylor, written on the occasion of his visit to 
Iceland to attend its millennial celebration, in August, 
1874. 

" We come, the children of thy Vinland, 
The youngest of the world's high peers, 
O land of steel, and song, and saga. 
To greet thy glorious thousand years. 

" Across that sea the son of Erik 

Dared with his venturous dragon's prow ; 
From shores where Thorfinn set thy banner 
Their latest children seek thee now. 



" What though thy native harps be silent ? 
The chord they struck shall ours prolong; 
We claim thee kindred, call thee mother, 
O land of saga, steel and song ! " 
36 



THE SANTA MARIA, NINA and PINTA 



{Evening of October ii, 1492) 

THE DEBARKATION OF COLUMBUS 



{Morning of October 12, 1492) 



III. 



THE SANTA MARIA, NINA AND PINTA (EVENING OF OCTO- 
BER II, 1492) * 



AND 



IV. 



THE DEBARKATION OF COLUMBUS (MORNING OF OCTOBER 
12, 1492).! 

The landing of Columbus was an historical event of 
such importance in its consequences that the artist wisely 
celebrates it in both of these pictures. 

We little realize what it meant to brave the perils of 
the unexplored ocean in the year 1492. We marvel when 
some adventurous navigator, even now, when every cur- 
rent and wind of the ocean have been observed for five 
hundred years, and are accurately known and precisely 
charted, undertakes to cross it in a somewhat diminutive 
vessel. What, then, must have been the courage of 
Columbus, when, at the advanced age of fifty-seven, he 
ventured with his crew upon this perilous undertaking in 
three frail barks or caravels, the largest of them equipped 
with a single deck and a single bridge, with an awkward 
one-story compartment at the prow and a two-story com- 
partment at the stern, and the two others without any 

* Eight feet long by four and one-half feet high, 
f Four and one-half feet long by three feet high. 

39 



deck at all, with their little masts carrying awkward, 
unwieldy, partly square and partly lateen sails ! 

The three crews consisted of only one hundred and 
four men combined,of which fifty were on the little" Santa 
Maria," which was only about sixty-three feet over all in 
length, with a fifty-one foot keel, twenty foot beam, and a 
depth of ten and one-half feet, under the command of the 
'* Admiral " himself, as he was pompously called, and 
thirty on the still smaller " Pinta," under the command of 
" Captain " Martin Alonso Pinzon, while the still more 
diminutive cockle-shell " Nina " contained the formidable 
crew of twenty-four under the command of the brother 
of Martin Alonso, the redoubtable " Captain " Vincente 
Yanez Pinzon. And then to think that, instead of being 
encouraged and lauded for his enterprise, the prelude 
consisted of discouragement, derision and persecution 
of the foolhardy seaman who dared to brave the super- 
stitions of the age and the unknown ocean which was 
supposed to be peopled with demons and monsters, in 
quest of what was believed to be an absolutely impossible 
pathway to China and the East Indies, and from which 
there could not be any hope of return. A model of 
these caravels was exhibited in the Columbian Exposi- 
tion at Chicago, in 1893, at the sight of which wonder 
grew to incredulity that, under such circumstances as 
surrounded this first voyage of Columbus, any one should 
have risked his life in such a craft. 

Even assuming with John Fiske that the spherical form 
of the earth was known long before Columbus, and that 
he derived his knowledge of the existence of the western- 
most shore of the Atlantic Ocean through information 
which he received of the voyages of the Norsemen, on 
his visit to Iceland in 1477, his opinion that the same 
shore might be reached by crossing the Atlantic, where 
it had never been traversed before, was based upon mere 
surmise. No wonder that his crew were disheartened 

40 



and on the verge of open mutiny when, under such cir- 
cumstances, after about sixty-nine days had elapsed since 
they had sailed from Palos on August 3, 1492, they had 
still not reached the longed-for land. What faith, almost 
inspired, must have been his, that he should succeed in 
persuading his men to hold out only a few days more, 
and how strange that on the very next day, the seven- 
tieth of his voyage, on the evening of October 11, 1492, 
the long-wished-for goal should be descried in the dim 
distance, and that on the following day they should actu- 
ally disembark from their floating prisons to stand once 
more upon solid ground ! 

The artist has chosen the inspiring moments of these 
two events to immortalize them in these two pictures : 
in the one, the three tiny barks in the shadow of the 
evening, still in the gloom and uncertainty of what the 
morrow would bring forth — and then, in the other, the 
brilliant spectacle of Columbus with cross uplifted, in 
magnificent regalia of scarlet and gold and purple, and 
his officers with the standards of Castile and Leon, and 
the white and green colors of the expedition, disembark- 
ing with his men when his hopes had become a reality, 
for the purpose of claiming the newly discovered land. 

I quote from Emilio Castelar the following description 
of the events illustrated by these pictures : 

" Land ! land ! the cry fell as a joyous peal upon the 
ears of these mariners who had given themselves up as 
lost and doomed to die in the fathomless vast. 

" When Columbus heard the glad cry he knelt in rapt- 
ure on the deck and with clasped hands lifted his joy- 
filled eyes to Heaven and intoned the ' Gloria in Excelsis ' 
to the Author of all things. 

" The signs of land now made it high time to prepare 
for the debarkation for which all measures had been 
wisely planned by the admiral, who had never doubted 
the realization of his predictions. 

41 



" Each moment brought a revelation. A solitary, half- 
tamed turtle-dove flew near them and was followed by a 
floating, leafy reed. 

" About two in the morning of October 12th, amid the 
sheen of the stars and phosphorescence of the sea, one 
of the crew, with eyes accustomed, like some nocturnal 
creature, to the darkness, cried ' Land ! land ! ' 



" Columbus donned his richest apparel, upon his 
shoulders a cloak of rosy purple, and grasped in one hand 
the sword of combat and in the other the Redeemer's 
cross; then, disembarking, he knelt upon the land, and, 
with uplifted arms, joined with his followers in the Te 
Deum." 

In these paintings much is left to the imagination, 
which renders them all the more beautiful and poetical, 
although also in them the artist has accurately portrayed 
the caravels, costumes, figures and indications of the 
nearby shore, so that the scenes are vividly brought to 
mind as actually described in the journals of the great 
navigator himself and his first biographer, his own son 
Ferdinand. 

It is not the purpose of the author to write history, and 
yet how tempting, in the study of these pictures, is it to 
reflect upon and recall the romance which surrounds the 
whole life of Columbus and his period : the honors which 
he received on his return to Spain, his subsequent two 
additional voyages of discovery, w^hen, to those of the 
first, consisting of San Salvador, Cuba, and the other 
islands, he added that of the continent of South America ; 
how he returned from his third voyage in chains and 
afterwards died in poverty and forgotten at Valladolid. 
on May 20, 1506, his name scarcely mentioned at the time 
in the records of that town ; how still stranger that 

42 



Columbus never knew that he had discovered a new con- 
tinent, but believed that, as he had originally intended, 
he had reached the shores of the Indies and China or 
Cathay by a new route, and therefore gave them the name 
which has ever since attached to the islands where he 
first landed, of the West Indies, and called the natives, 
Indians ; and, strangest of all, that four hundred and six 
years after he first landed at San Salvador, the remains 
of the great discoverer should have been transferred from 
the cathedral at Havana to Spain, the scene of all his 
triumphs and all his sorrows, on September 24, 1898, just 
about the close of the Spanish-American war, which is 
celebrated in the last or thirteenth of this remarkable 
series of paintings. 

The courage, faith and fortitude of Columbus in per- 
sisting in his westward journey, in full confidence that he 
would eventually reach the shore w^hich must ever have 
been pictured in his mind, in spite of the doubts and fears 
and protestations of his weary crew, are beautifully and 
concisely expressed in the stanzas of Friedrich Schiller : * 

" Brave sailor, steer onward! Though the jester deride 
And the hand of the pilot the helm drops in fear ; 
Sail on to the West, till that shore is descried 
Which so clearly defined to thy mind doth appear. 

" Follow God's guiding hand and the great silent ocean ! 
For the shore, were it not, from the waves it would rise. 
With genius is nature linked in such bonds of devotion 
That what genius presages, nature never denies." 

* It is difficult to preserve the full beauty of the original of these 
concise verses in a translation ; but in attempting this I have found it 
quite as easy to rhyme them as to reproduce them simply in the blank 
verse of the original, in which rhymes occur in only two lines. 

43 



MIDNIGHT MASS ON THE 
MISSISSIPPI 

Over the Body of Ferdinand de Soto 
1542 



MIDNIGHT MASS ON THE MISSISSIPPI OVER THE BODY OF 
FERDINAND DE SOTO, 1 542.* 

As simple, gloomy and severe as were the circum- 
stances surrounding the departure of the expeditions of 
Lief Erickson and Columbus, and subsequently of Henry 
Hudson and the Pilgrim Fathers, so brilliant, hopeful and 
coveted was the journey of Fernando De Soto, when he 
set sail from Spain in April, 1538, to conquer Florida 
and in search of a new Eldorado. Having previously 
returned from the conquest of Peru, as the chief lieuten- 
ant of Francisco Pizarro, possessed of great wealth, and 
through his marriage with the beautiful Isabella Boba- 
dilla affiliated with the highest nobility, and having been 
appointed Governor of Cuba by Charles V. — the flower 
of the Spanish and Portuguese aristocracy flocked to his 
standard. The seven large and three small ships, includ- 
ing his flag-ship, the " San Christoval," in which the expe- 
dition set sail, were fitted out with great splendor. De 
Soto was then forty-two years of age, having been born 
at Xeres, Spain, in 1496, while his followers were mostly 
young men, and a more gorgeous or joyous company 
cannot be imagined. With them went the wife of De 
Soto and many other beautiful women, and the voyage 
was one round of pleasure and festivities. After land- 
ing and wintering in Cuba he started from there in May, 
1539, with a following of one thousand men in nine ships, 
leaving the administration of Cuba in the hands of his 
* About four feet long by two and one-half feet high. 
47 



wife and the Lieutenant-Governor. The original splendor 
was preserved, the leaders being clad in gorgeous armor 
and, followed by a host of servants and priests, they took 
with them all manner of live stock, cattle, horses, mules, 
etc., and were provided with all sorts of weapons and 
trappings, but also, significantly, with blood-hounds, 
handcuflFs and iron neck-collars. Thus they landed in 
Florida, in the neighborhood of Tampa Bay, and began 
their march northward in the month of June, 1539, the 
cavaliers to the number of one hundred and thirteen on 
horseback, and the rest on foot. They passed the winter 
near the present Georgia border, and in the spring of 
1540 reached the location of the present city of Savannah. 
Instead of pacifying, they alienated the natives through 
many acts of hostility, in the exuberance of their youth 
and prowess, in consequence of which many members of 
the expedition were killed in battle and others died 
through sickness and deprivation. Nevertheless, they 
pushed on still further westward towards the Rocky 
Mountains, and in May, 1541, discovered and crossed 
the Mississippi River near Lower Chickasaw Bluff, a 
little north of the thirty-fourth parallel of latitude, in 
Tunica County, in what is now the State of Mississippi. 
On again reaching the Mississippi on the return march, 
De Soto, in consequence of the exposure and hardships 
to which he had been subjected, sank down with a fever 
from which he died on May 21, 1542. Owing to the awe 
which he had inspired in the minds of the natives it was 
deemed wise by the remnant of his followers to conceal 
the fact of his death. Accordingly at the dead of night 
he was wrapped in a flag, in which sand had been sown, 
and taken in a boat to the middle of the river, and amid 
the glare of torches, the chanting by the priests of the 
midnight mass, and his sorrowing and silent companions, 
solemnly consigned to the depths of the great river. 
It is this solemn moment which the artist has caught 

48 



in the painting bearing the above title. As in all the 
other pictures he has, also in this, depicted all the im- 
portant details of the occasion without descending to 
such minute particularity that the painting would lose its 
poetic character. The sad scene recalls vividly to the 
mind — in contrast with the high hope and magnificent 
display of the expedition at its start — the futility of 
human ambition. 

The tone of the picture is heightened through the 
mingling of the pale moonlight with the lurid reflection 
from the torches, and the coloring altogether is such that 
it is in perfect harmony with the occasion. 

It is unnecessary to dwell upon the subsequent fate of 
the remnant of the expedition, except, perhaps, to say 
that the picture itself gains in interest by contemplating 
that, after wandering through the pathless forests, wad- 
ing swamps, swimming rivers and fighting Indians all 
the time, and deprived of their leader, and after four years 
of hardships from the time that the expedition set out, 
those who were left made their way to Mexico. In the 
meantime the beautiful wife of De Soto had died broken- 
hearted, and never was there, all in all, a more tragic 
ending to an expedition commenced amid so much pomp 
and glory and with such sanguine expectations. His 
longed-for Eldorado was not found, and yet De Soto, 
not unlike Columbus, gained immortality more surely 
than if his expectations had been realized ; for the Father 
of Waters, the greatest river in the world, will always be 
associated with his name, and the acquisition of the vast 
province of Louisiana by Spain led the way for its subse- 
quent transfer to the United States. It was on April 30, 
1803, that through the negotiations conducted by James 
Monroe and Robert Livingston the Province of Louisi- 
ana was purchased for the sum of about $15,000,000 
from France, which nation had prior thereto acquired it 
from Spain. 

49 



In view of the chapters of history which a contempla- 
tion of this picture recalls, it is of particular interest 
during this year (1904), when through the magnificent 
Louisiana Purchase Exposition we are celebrating the 
centennial anniversary of the acquisition by the United 
States of the vast territory, which before De Soto and his 
followers the foot of white man had never trod. 

50 



HENRY HUDSON ENTERING 
NEW YORK BAY 



{September ii, i6op) 



VI. 



HENRY HUDSON ENTERING NEW YORK BAY, SEPTEMBER 
II, 1609.* 

Previous to his discovery of the Hudson River, Henry- 
Hudson, an EngUshman, sometimes erroneously called 
Hendrick Hudson because the ship in which he sailed 
was fitted out under the auspices of the Dutch East India 
Company and the Amsterdam Chamber of Commerce, 
had made three voyages to find a northwest passage to 
China and India. To reach those shores via the Atlantic 
seems to have been the goal of all the early discoverers, 
including Columbus and also De Soto, who, before his 
Florida expedition, had explored the coast of Central 
America, on the Pacific Ocean, in search of a passage 
through the American continent ; and even Hudson sailed 
up the Hudson River in the expectation that it would 
lead on to the Pacific Ocean and thus to Asia. Hudson 
was not the only Englishman who had received encour- 
agement and assistance from Holland when his own land 
had failed him, the same as did the Pilgrims soon there- 
after, when they sought refuge in that enlightened and 
enterprising country. 

He sailed from Amsterdam on April 6, 1609, in a 
clumsy, two-masted craft with square sails called the 
" Half Moon," a Dutch galiot of only ninety tons, with a 
crew of twenty men, in an extreme northwesterly direc- 
tion, but being driven back by the ice, skirted along the 
* About eight feet long b)' four and one-half feet high. 
53 



Atlantic coast, passing through Casco Bay, Maine, as far 
south as Chesapeake Bay, and thence again northward, 
and entered Raritan Bay, south of Staten Island, on 
September ii, 1609, into the present harbor of New 
York, and, on September 14th, sailed up the Hudson 
River almost as far as Albany. 

The return voyage down the Hudson to its mouth, 
owing to adverse winds, occupied eleven days, and on 
November 7, 1609, he landed at Dartmouth, England, 
where, owing to the jealousy of the English Government, 
the crew was detained and his ship seized, although she 
had borne the Dutch flag and Hudson had claimed the 
sovereignty of the soil for that country over that portion 
of the American continent which he had discovered. It 
was to all intents and purposes a discovery, as the first 
definite historic account of the existence of this part of 
the new world dated from this voyage, of which he kept 
a careful journal, however probable it may be that, before 
him, other Europeans had looked upon Manhattan Island 
and the Hudson River, in view of the many expeditions 
to America during the long period from the tenth to the 
seventeenth centuries. 

The discovery of Hudson led almost immediately to 
numerous trading voyages, and thereafter to temporary, 
and then to regular and permanent colonization, and 
finally to the foundation of the great City of New York. 
Also with Hudson, the same as with Columbus and De 
Soto, is thus linked a discovery far greater in its conse- 
quences than if he had succeeded in reaching the goal 
which he originally set out to find. Like theirs, also his 
ending was sad and tragic, for on a subsequent north- 
western voyage, his mutinous crew cast him, together with 
his son and seven of his faithful men, adrift amid the 
ice of Hudson Bay, which bears his name, thus like De 
Soto perishing in the very waters which he had dis- 
covered. 

54 



His life is wrapt in mystery ; nothing is known of it 
except during the four years occupied with his voyages 
(1607 to 161 1 ), and that he was probably the son of 
Christopher Hudson, one of the factors of the Muscovy 
Company. There is not even an authentic portrait of him 
in existence. 

The interest of this painting centers in the scene, which 
it vividly depicts, of the effect upon the natives of this 
first sight of a ship. Nothing could be more intense than 
the expression of mingled fear and defiant surprise por- 
trayed in the face and attitude of the young Indian 
warrior, that so strange an object should dare to approach 
his hitherto undisputed domain of the shore. This in- 
terest is heightened through the grouping of the squaw 
and Indian dog, with the Indian hut or tepee in the back- 
ground on the edge of the forest, and the rocky shore 
in the foreground. The ship itself is subordinated to 
the representation of this idea, being only dimly seen in 
the distance. 

Through this conception, the artist was enabled to 
present a picture which adds to the variety of the series, 
and at the same time demonstrates his surpassing mastery 
of figure and landscape painting as well. 

55 



EMBARKATION OF THE PILGRIMS 

From Southampton 



(August 5, 1620) 



VII. 



EMBARKATION OF THE PILGRIMS FROM SOUTHAMPTON, 
AUGUST 5, 1620.* 

A sadder journey than that of the Pilgrims, both in its 
inception in leaving home and kindred and fleeing from 
persecution, and in its ending in the inconceivable hard- 
ships which they had to endure in the new world, was 
probably never undertaken than when, on August 5, 1620, 
the " Mayflower " sailed out of the harbor of Southamp- 
ton. 

It must have been with heavy hearts and the gloomi- 
est forebodings, and yet buoyed up with the hope of find- 
ing a permanent refuge beyond the ocean, for the exercise 
of that freedom of conscience for which they had previ- 
ously found only a temporary abode at Leyden, Holland, 
that the hundred brave men and women, representing 
twenty-three different families, consigned their lives and 
fortunes into the hands of the crew of the little one 
hundred and sixty ton vessel that for almost five long 
months was to battle with storm and winds across the 
dreaded Atlantic, until on December 21, 1620, they an- 
chored on the shores of Massachusetts, and, with that 
spirit of loyalty, still, to the land from which they had 
fled, named the spot where they first landed, Plymouth 
Rock, to which they had been driven in the stress and 
storm, instead of reaching the Virginia colony, for which 
they had set sail. 

• About four feet long by about two and one-half feet high, 
59 



What that departure of the Pilgrims from England 
meant to those left behind on the shore at Southampton 
can hardly be conceived by those who, in our day, at some 
magnificent steamship pier, amid the strains of music and 
a shower of flowers, now and anon wave a farewell to 
their friends, perhaps bound on a pleasure tour in some 
leviathan of the ocean, of twenty thousand or more tons 
burden, and fitted up in more regal splendor than the 
most gorgeous palaces of the age of the Pilgrims. 

It is to the sadness of this departure that the artist, 
in this canvas, has undertaken to give expression in the 
mournful group of friends on the shore, waving a final 
farewell and wistfully gazing at the " Mayflower," lying 
in mid-water and evidently waiting for the last passengers 
to arrive before setting sail on its perilous voyage into 
the mysterious darkness of the approaching night. There 
is a mellow gray light of evening diffused throughout 
this painting which is almost indescribable, with the moon 
casting its rays across the water, so perfectly is it in har- 
mony with the thread of the whole story which is sug- 
gested by this inimitable picture. 

I can think of no more fitting words to accompany this 
canvas than those of Edward Everett, in his oration at 
Plymouth, on December 22, 1824, on " The Emigration 
of the Pilgrim Fathers " : 

" Methinks I see it now, that one solitary, adventurous 
vessel, the ' Mayflower ' of a forlorn hope, freighted with 
the prospects of a future State, and bound across the 
unknown sea. I behold it pursuing, with a thousand 
misgivings, the uncertain, the tedious voyage. Suns rise 
and set, and weeks and months pass, and winter sur- 
prises them on the deep, but brings them not the sight 
of the wished-for shore. I see them now scantily sup- 
plied with provisions, crowded almost to suffocation in 
their ill-stored prison, delayed by calms, pursuing a cir- 

60 



cuitoiis route ; and now driven in fury before the raging 
tempest, on the high and giddy waves. The awful 
voice of the storm howls through the rigging. The labor- 
ing masts seem straining from their base ; the dismal 
sound of the pumps is heard ; the ship leaps, as it were, 
madly from billow to billow ; the ocean breaks, and settles 
with engulfing floods over the floating deck, and beats 
with deadening weight against the staggered vessel. I 
see them, escaped from these perils, pursuing their all 
but desperate undertaking, and landed at last, after five 
months' passage, on the ice-clad rocks of Plymouth, — 
weak and weary from the voyage, poorly armed, scantily 
provisioned, depending on the charity of their shipmaster 
for a draft of beer on board, drinking nothing but water 
on shore, without shelter, without means, surrounded by 
hostile tribes." 

What an extraordinary coincidence it is that a Dutch 
slaver, laden with slaves for Virginia, should be on the 
ocean at the same time with the " Mayflower," in whose 
cabin was written the first charter of independence, the 
first American constitution, in the words following: 

" In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are 
underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign 
Lord, King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, 
France, and Ireland king, defender of the faith, etc., hav- 
ing undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement 
of the Christian faith, and honor of our king and country, 
a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of 
Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually in 
the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and 
combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for 
our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of 
the ends aforesaid ; and by virtue hereof to enact, con- 
stitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, 

6l 



acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall 
be thought most meet and convenient for the general 
good of the Colony, unto which we promise all due sub- 
mission and obedience." 

What but a reflection of these words is the memorable 
preamble to the Constitution of the United States, framed 
by the convention of 1787 : 

" We, the people of the United States, in order to form 
a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic 
tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote 
the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty 
to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain this Constitution 
for the United States of America." 

What a debt of gratitude we owe to the leaders of that 
expedition. Carver, Winslow, Bradford and Standish, 
who thus planted this colony in the United States, prac- 
tically the first after that in Virginia — but also to the 
great artist who fortunately came from the shores of the 
same England to immortalize, through this beautiful pict- 
ure, the first scene in the drama whose culmination is 
the establishment of the greatest republic that the world 
has ever seen ! 

" There were men with hoary hair 
Amidst that pilgrim-band : 
Why had they come to wither there. 
Away from their childhood's land ? 

" There was woman's fearless eye, 
Lit by her deep love's truth ; 
There was manhood's brow serenely high, * 

And the fiery heart of youth. 
62 



" What sought they thus afar ? 
Bright jewels of the mine? 
The wealth of seas, the spoils of war ? — 
They sought a faith's pure shrine ! 

" Ay, call it holy ground, 

The soil where first they trod ; 
They have left unstained what there they found- 
Freedom to worship God." 

Felicia Hemans. 
63 



FIRST RECOGNITION OF THE 
AMERICAN FLAG 

By a Foreign Government 



(In the Harbor of Quiberon, France, February ij. lyyS) 



VIII. 

FIRST RECOGNITION OF THE AMERICAN FLAG BY A FOREIGN 
GOVERNMENT. 

Jn the Harbor of Quihcron, France, February 13, 1778.* 

" When Freedom, from her mountain height, 
Unfurled her standard to the air, 
She tore the azure robe of night 

And set the stars of glory there ! 
She mingled with its gorgeous dyes 
The milky baldric of the skies, 
And striped its pure, celestial white 
With streakings of the morning light." 

Drake. 

Between the time of the landing of the Pilgrims and 
the event represented in this picture one hundred and 
fifty-eight years had elapsed. The hardy pioneers who 
had ventured across the ocean in considerable numbers 
had increased to thirteen colonies, the Declaration of 
Independence had been signed, the War of the Revolu- 
tion was being fought, a preliminary confederation had 
been formed among the thirteen States, the first American 
Congress had met, and this, on June 14, 1777, '* Resolved 
that the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen 
stripes, alternate red and white ; and the Union be thirteen 
white stars on a blue field," and on the same day had 

■* About six feet long by about three and one-third feet high. 
67 



appointed John Paul Jones, usually known as Paul Jones, 
to the command of the " Ranger," who soon thereafter 
hoisted the new flag on board that vessel at Portsmouth. 
The "Ranger" set out to sea about November ist, her 
battery consisting of sixteen six-pounders, throwing only 
forty-eight pounds of shot from a broadside, an arma- 
ment which appears grotesquely lilliputian in comparison 
with the thirteen-inch guns, firing projectiles of over half 
a ton from our steel-armored battleships of to-day, which 
cost as much as five million dollars and are of 16,000 
tons burden. With this little ship he sailed to Europe, 
capturing two prizes on the way, and, after touching at 
Nantes, sailed to Quiberon Bay, east of Quiberon, on the 
Bay of Biscay, a small town and peninsula about twenty- 
two miles south-east of Lorient, convoying some Amer- 
ican vessels, and placing them under the protection of the 
French fleet commanded by Admiral La Motte Piquet. 
The story represented in this picture he tells in his own 
language in a letter to the Naval Committee, dated Feb- 
ruary 22, 1778 : " I am happy to have it in my power to 
congratulate on my having seen the American flag for 
the first time recognized in the fullest and completest 
manner by the flag of France." He then recounts how, 
after preliminary communications with the Admiral, the 
latter thus honored the flag on February 13th, which he 
characterized as " an acknowledgment of American in- 
dependence." 

This, as well as each of the five subsequent paintings, 
depicts an important event in the history of our navy, 
and must be dear to every American heart in the incident 
which is thus perpetuated. The American flag is proudly 
displayed from the masthead and stern of the " Ranger," 
and the coloring is so adjusted that the flag appears to 
wave in the brightest light of the picture. The smoke 
of the booming cannon from the French fleet, the motion 
of the water, and the row-boats evidently plying in friendly 

68 



intercourse among the ships, the sky effect — all together 
combine to produce a piece of superb marine painting. 

Space forbids dwelling upon the exceptional, romantic, 
daring and successful career of Paul Jones, who was 
born in Scotland on July 6, 1747, and died in Paris on 
July 18, 1792, the first of that long list of heroic figures 
which have made the history of the American navy so 
illustrious. 

" The man that is not moved at what he reads. 
That takes not fire at their heroic deeds. 
Unworthy of the blessings of the brave. 
Is base in kind, and born to be a slave." 

COWPER. 

69 



Note. — Additional interest is lent to this canvas through the fact that 
quite recently (April, 1905) the remains of John Paul Jones, the hero 
of the occasion, were discovered in Paris, and are to be interred in the 
United States. 



BURNING OF THE FRIGATE 
PHILADELPHIA 



{In the Harbor of Tripoli, February i6, 1804) 




Copyright. 1898, by Edward Moran. 



IX. 



BURNING OF THE FRIGATE PHILADELPHIA. 

In the Harbor of Tripoli, February i6, 1804.* 

This canvas represents one of the most daring feats 
ever performed in naval warfare, equalled only, perhaps, 
by the exploit of Lieutenant Hobson in sinking the collier 
" Merrimac " in the harbor of Santiago during the Span- 
ish-American war of 1898. Lord Nelson characterized 
the burning of the " Philadelphia " as the most daring 
act of the age. The " Philadelphia " was the sister ship 
of the famous " Constitution," and under the command 
of Captain Bainbridge had been despatched to Tripoli to 
demand satisfaction for losses suffered by our merchant 
marine at the hands of Algerian pirates, who had been 
preying upon the commerce of the world for years. Ar- 
riving on the Algerian coast, she was led upon a reef by 
pirates whom she was chasing, her officers and crew were 
taken prisoners, her guns were thrown overboard, and 
she was taken into the harbor by her captors, and there 
remanned, regunned and made ready to defend the city 
against the other American ships which were blockading 
the port. 

From his prison Captain Bainbridge managed to get 
into communication with the American fleet, and to sug- 

* This is the only upright canvas of the series, being about five 
feet in height by about three and one-half feet in width. 

73 



gest the feasibility of destroying the " Philadelphia." 
Acting upon this suggestion Lieutenant Decatur under- 
took the perilous task. Decatur had sailed into the 
harbor of Tripoli in the frigate " United States " in the 
Preble expedition and captured a small Tripolitan vessel, 
which was renamed the " Intrepid." In her, with a 
crew of seventy-four brave volunteers, and accompanied 
by the " Siren," he sailed straight up to the " Phila- 
delphia " in the evening, sprang on board with his men, 
and after a furious struggle and under the fire of the 
coast batteries, whose cannon swept the approach to 
the " Philadelphia," the Americans either killed or 
drove into the sea all the Tripolitans on board the 
" Philadelphia," which was set on fire, while the " In- 
trepid," with the assistance of the " Siren," escaped with- 
out the loss of a single man. It was a deed of marvellous 
bravery, so much so that on November 15, 1804, Thomas 
Jefferson sent a special message to Congress stating that 
Lieutenant Decatur had been advanced to be a Captain, 
and it is not surprising that so brave a seaman gradually 
rose to the rank of Commodore in the United States navy. 
He was the hero of many subsequent brilliant exploits, 
principally in foreign waters, and effectually showed the 
nations of Europe how to put an end to the piracy and 
insolence of the Barbary States, which had lasted for 
nearly three centuries. He was the recipient of many 
distinguished honors, and was presented with a sword 
by Congress for his share in the destruction of the 
" Philadelphia," and in 1812 with a gold medal for his 
capture of the British frigate " Macedonian " by his own 
ship the " United States." His patriotic devotion to his 
country is well exemplified in a toast which he proposed 
in 1816 on the occasion of a banquet which was tendered 
to him : " Our Country ! In her intercourse with foreign 
nations, may she always be in the right ; but our Country, 
right or wrong." 

74 



Decatur was born in Maryland on January 5, 1779, 
and died on March 22, 1820, in a duel with Commodore 
Barron. 

Andrew Jackson, in his first annual message to Con- 
gress on December 8, 1829, referred to the heroic deed 
represented in this painting in the following language : 

" I cannot close this communication without bringing 
to your view the just claim of the representatives of 
Commodore Decatur, his officers and crew, arising from 
the recapture of the frigate ' Philadelphia ' under the 
heavy batteries of Tripoli. Although sensible, as a gen- 
eral rule, of the impropriety of Executive interference 
under a Government like ours, where every individual en- 
joys the right of directly petitioning Congress, yet, view- 
ing this case as one of very peculiar character, I deem it 
my duty to recommend it to your favorable consideration. 
Besides the justice of this claim, as corresponding to 
those which have been since recognized and satisfied, it 
is the fruit of a deed of patriotic and chivalrous daring 
which infused life and confidence into our infant navy 
and contributed as much as any exploit in its history to 
elevate our national character. Public gratitude, there- 
fore, stamps her seal upon it, and the meed should not 
be withheld which may hereafter operate as a stimulus 
to our gallant tars." 

The burning of the " Philadelphia " is one of the most 
striking pictures in the series. The effect of the mount- 
ing flames against the moonless and midnight sky is 
impressive and spectacular, and their lurid reflection in 
the water, with a glimpse of the Algerian fort and bat- 
teries in the background to the right, and the little vessel 
of Decatur, fittingly named the " Intrepid," skimming 
along the water away from the burning ship, with swell- 
ing sail and powerful stroke of oar, with the dense masses 

75 



of smoke rising to the extreme height of the painting 
and a shower of burning embers descending into the 
water— produce an effect, so vivid and reahstic, of a great 
conflagration, that the eye is riveted to the scene with 
never-failing interest. 

76 



THE BRIG ARMSTRONG ENGAGING 
THE BRITISH FLEET 



{In the Harbor of Fayal, September 26, 1814) 



X. 

THE BRIG ARMSTRONG ENGAGING THE BRITISH FLEET. 

In the Harbor of Fayal, September 26, 1814.* 

It is difficult to discriminate, in awarding the meed of 
praise for bravery, amid the many heroic deeds of the 
American navy. For fighting quaHties and success in 
repulsing overwhelming numbers the exploit of Captain 
Samuel Chester Reid, in his battle with the British sea- 
men which this picture illustrates, has never been sur- 
passed. It was on the 26th of September, 18 14, that the 
privateer, the brig " Armstrong," which had been fitted 
out in New York, cast anchor in the harbor of Fayal, one 
of the Azores, belonging to the neutral government of 
Portugal. About the same time three British ships, the 
'* Plantagenet," the " Carnation " and the " Rota," under 
the command of Commodore Lloyd, appeared in the same 
harbor, and without further ceremony sent out four boat 
loads of men towards the brig " Armstrong," evidently 
with hostile intention. Captain Reid, realizing the futil- 
ity of relying upon the protection of the impotent Portu- 
guese authorities, prepared for the worst, and, on receiv- 
ing a threatening response to a challenge which he 
addressed to the approaching boats, he unhesitatingly 
opened fire. As his crew consisted of only ninety men, 
his armament of eight nine-pounders, with only the 
famous " Long Tom," a twenty-four pounder (which was 

* About five and one-half feet long by about three feet high. 
79 



exhibited at the World's Fair at Chicago in 1893) as a 
gun of any consequence to rely upon, while the enemy 
numbered over two thousand men and had a combined 
armament of one hundred and thirty-six guns, the hardi- 
hood of this initial proceeding will be apparent. After 
having suffered some loss in killed and wounded, three 
of the enemy's boats beat a hasty retreat, the fourth 
having been sunk, but about midnight the attack was 
renewed by fourteen boats, loaded to the guards with at 
least four hundred men. Captain Reid with his men 
fought like tigers, and " Long Tom," under the command 
of William Copeland, mowed down the enemy without 
giving them a chance to carry out their evident inten- 
tion of capturing the ship. The battle lasted only forty 
minutes, but during this time two boats of the enemy 
had been captured and two sunk, and nearly three 
hundred of their men either killed or wounded, while 
Reid achieved a complete victory with the loss of only 
two men killed and seven wounded. A third attack was 
made by the enemy soon after daybreak, this time directly 
with the guns of the brig " Carnation," but " Long Tom," 
with its twenty-four pound shots, did so much damage to 
the hull of the enemy's ship that she was forced to with- 
draw, thus leaving the victory for the third time with 
Captain Reid, Having so far succeeded in warding 
off the enemy, Captain Reid thereupon, however, realiz- 
ing the futility of continuing to fight against such odds, 
left the brig, after having scuttled and set her on fire, and 
reached the shore in safety. There the inhabitants of the 
town did all in their power to care for the wounded and 
protect the brave little band, who had barricaded them- 
selves in a small stone church ; and a demand made by the 
British commander for their surrender, on the ground 
that there were deserters among them, proved futile, as 
the charge could not be established. 

Subsequently the Portuguese Government raised 

80 



" Long Tom," the historic gun of the " Armstrong," and 
presented it to the United States Government, and in 
January, 1887, Samuel C. Reid, the son and namesake of 
the vahant Captain, offered through President Cleveland 
to the United States the battle sword of his father — thus 
preserving these two invaluable relics as mementos of 
one of the most remarkable sea-fights in history. 

Years later, Louis Napoleon, then Emperor of France, 
undertook to arbitrate the claims of the United States 
Government against the British Government for the loss 
of the " Armstrong," but decided in favor of the British 
on the ground that Captain Reid had opened fire on the 
British ships and thereby had failed to respect the 
neutrality of the port and must abide the result of his 
commencing hostilities. 

The owners of the " Armstrong " made repeated efforts 
to obtain redress for the loss of their ship, but it was not 
until the year 1897 (about the time that Mr. Moran fin- 
ished this painting) that some money was received, and, 
strange to say, paid over to the widow of the owner, Mr. 
Havens, the old lady then being ninety-eight years of age. 

It may be interesting to recall that it was Captain Reid 
who, about the year 1817, designed the present flag of 
the United States, which for a time had been altered to 
fifteen stripes to designate the number of States to which 
the country had increased. On the suggestion of Captain 
Reid the number was again reduced to thirteen, and the 
addition of the States designated by the number of stars 
in the blue field. This was adopted by Act of Congress 
on April 4, 18 18, and the first flag that was flung to the 
breeze, under the new law, was made by Mrs. Reid, the 
wife of the gallant Captain, the stars in the blue field 
being arranged at that time in the shape of a constella- 
tion constituting one great star. 

Besides the glory which Captain Reid achieved through 
his wonderful exploit at Fayal — all the more wonderful 



if it is remembered that he and his men were volunteer 
seamen, untrained in the regular navy of the United States 
— he had rendered his country a service far greater even 
than this feat of arms. It so happened that the ships of 
Commodore Lloyd were bound for the Gulf of Mexico 
to assist in the attack upon New Orleans ; but by reason 
of the injury and demoralization inflicted on them by 
Captain Reid they were delayed long enough to prevent 
their co-operating with the British General, Sir Edward 
Packenham, in an earlier attack upon New Orleans, as 
originally contemplated, when General Jackson was not 
prepared to meet and defeat the enemy ; the consequence 
of which might have been the loss to the United States 
of the entire Province of Louisiana, which had only a 
decade before been acquired from France. 

Captain Reid was born at Norwich, Connecticut, on 
August 25, 1783, and died at the venerable age of seventy- 
eight at New York on January 28, 1861, on the very eve 
of our great Civil War, having enjoyed many honors, 
among them an appointment as Warden of the Port of 
New York. 

Not only on account of the extraordinary character of 
the fight itself, but also on account of its indirect conse- 
quences, in assisting to bring the War of 1812 to a close, 
is this painting of the greatest interest. It measures full 
up to the excellence of the other numbers of the series, 
notwithstanding the immediate subject was not one which 
presented the most graphic material for the brush of the 
painter. Mr. Moran chose the most thrilling incident of 
the fight in depicting the firing of the brig on the ap- 
proaching row-boats of the enemy. This he has accom- 
plished with consummate skill. He has herein, as in all 
his other battle scenes on the water, avoided the portrayal 
of carnage and destruction of human life in lurid colors 
as is the custom with most painters. He has left these 
abhorrent scenes to the imagination, and has thereby 

82 



rendered his pictures, while suggesting all the dreadful 
accompaniments of warfare, chaste, and free from scenes 
which are revolting to the feelings. 

The picture is perfect in itself, in its representation of 
the position of the " Armstrong," swayed, as it evidently 
is, through the powerful blasts from its own twenty-four 
pounder — the fire of the rifles from the men in the Brit- 
ish row-boats — the buildings on the shore in the back- 
ground on the left, with the suggestion of the hills on 
which the town is built and the British ships in the offing 
on the right — with the rising moon in the distance — 
and the shores of Fayal dimly defined upon the horizon, 
extending, as they do in fact, with their two widening 
arms around the harbor. 

83 



IRON VERSUS WOOD 

Sinking of the Cumberland by the 
Merrimac 



(/« Hampton Roads, March 8, 1862) 



XL 



IRON VERSUS WOOD — SINKING OF THE CUMBERLAND BY 
THE MERRIMAC. 

In Hampton Roads, March 8, 1862.* 

The title of this picture suggests not only the unequal 
character of the fight which the wooden ship " Cumber- 
land " fought against the iron-clad " Merrimac," the first 
iron-clad that ever sailed in American waters, but also 
recalls to mind the contrast between the steel-armored 
battleships of the navies of the world of to-day and the 
wooden hulks which prevailed up to that time. It is a 
long span of time from the battle of brave Captain Reid 
in the harbor of Fayal in 1814 to the year 1861, but dur- 
ing that half century little progress had been made in 
supplying the ships of our navy with protecting devices, 
as there had likewise been little occasion for naval war- 
fare. In fact, outside of the Mexican War and fights 
with the Indians, the country was at peace with itself as 
well as with the outside world, and it was not until the 
great struggle for the preservation of the Union called 
the whole country to arms, both on sea and land, that the 
opportunity was again presented for the shedding of 
additional lustre on our naval history. 

The most thrilling and startling of all the events on 
the sea, during this sanguinary conflict, followed when, 
at noon on March 8, 1862, a novel craft, such as had 
* About four and one-quarter feet long by about three feet high. 

87 



never been seen before, was cut loose from her moorings 
in Norfolk, and, after having steamed down the Elizabeth 
River, was seen to head boldly for Newport News, where 
lay the United States frigate " Congress " of fifty guns, 
under the command of Lieutenant Joseph B. Smith, and 
the twenty-four gun sloop of war '' Cumberland," in 
charge of Lieutenant George U. Morris during the tem- 
porary absence of its commander, William Radford, two 
of the fleet of national ships, all riding at anchor in 
fancied security, without a thought of the death and 
destruction which the appearance of the stranger por- 
tended. It was an odd-looking craft — the " Merrimac," 
as it is generally called — more like a house afloat than a 
war ship, and the officers of the Federal ships were at 
first inclined to belittle its importance. The undertaking 
of the " Merrimac " itself (or " Virginia," as she was 
called by the Confederates) was one of great courage, 
the vessel in its last stages having but just been converted 
into an iron-clad, in great haste, out of the hulk of a 
sunken old style man-of-war (the "Merrimac"), which 
had been raised by the Confederates. The experiment 
was a new one; the men had not been drilled; its arma- 
ment had never been tested, and its commander, Commo- 
dore Buchanan, had only recently arisen from a sick-bed. 
He had been a Union officer in the regular navy, and as 
such had placed the entire naval service under great 
obligations in being the first to have located the Naval 
Academy at Annapolis under a commission from the 
Secretary of the Navy. When it was realized by the 
commanders of the American ships that the " Merrimac " 
was steaming towards them in dead earnest there was 
hurried preparation for the impending conflict, and as 
she approached the " Cumberland " and the " Congress " 
they opened fire on the huge craft, but their heavy pro- 
jectiles glanced from her as if they were paper balls. 
About 2:30 P.M. the " I\Terrimac," then within easy 

83 



range, opened fire on the " Cumberland," doing much 
damage. The two Federal ships, which were only about 
one hundred feet away, then gave the " Merrimac " full 
broadsides, but without the slightest effect, and the latter 
craft mercilessly sent four shells crashing into the " Con- 
gress," notwithstanding that Commodore Buchanan had 
a brother, McKean Buchanan, paymaster on the " Con- 
gress " — a harrowing illustration of the horrifying en- 
counters among the closest kindred in civil warfare. 
After disabling the " Congress," the " Merrimac " 
directed her attention to the " Cumberland," and under a 
full head of steam her iron prow or ram, which pro- 
jected four feet, struck the Federal ship " nearly at right 
angles under the fore rigging in the starboard fore 
channels." I quote further from Maclay's " History of 
the Navy " : " The shock was scarcely felt in the iron- 
clad, but in the * Cumberland ' it was terrific. The ship 
heeled over to port and trembled as if she had struck a 
rock under full sail, while the iron prow of the ' Merri- 
mac ' crushed through her side and left a yawning 
chasm. In backing out of the * Cumberland,' the 
' Merrimac ' left her iron prow inside the doomed ship. 
Following up the blow by the discharge of her bow 
gun, she backed clear of the wreck. In response to a 
demand for surrender, Lieutenant Morris defiantly 
answered, * Never ! I'll sink alongside.' * * * * 
The scene in the * Cumberland ' soon became awful. One 
shell, bursting in the sick bay, killed or wounded four 
men in their cots. More than a hundred of the crew 
very soon were killed or wounded ; the cockpit was 
crowded ; the decks were slippery with blood and were 
strewn with the dead and dying, while the inrushing 
waters and the rapid settling of the ship too plainly indi- 
cated that she would soon go to the bottom. In order to 
prevent the helpless wounded on the berth deck from 
being drowned, they were lifted up on racks and mess 

89 



chests, and as the ship settled more and more they were 
removed from this temporary refuge and carried on deck 
and placed amidship. This was all that their shipmates 
could do for them, and when the ship finally went down 
they perished in her." 

After sinking the " Cumberland," the " Merrimac " 
again turned on the " Congress " with her entire broad- 
side and, owing to her own impervious character, soon 
got the Federal ship into such condition, notwithstanding 
the heroic defence of her men under Lieutenant Smith, 
who soon was killed, that she had to surrender, and there- 
after caught fire from the hot shot of the enemy and was 
destroyed. The " Merrimac," now under the command 
of Lieutenant Jones, a rifle ball having struck both Com- 
modore Buchanan and Flag-Lieutenant Minor, not yet 
satisfied with the destruction which she had wrought, then 
turned her attention to the remaining Federal ships, the 
" Minnesota," " St. Lawrence " and " Roanoke," and 
after having, w-ith the assistance of some accompanying 
Confederate gun-boats, played havoc especially with the 
" Minnesota," about seven o'clock in the evening, owing 
to the ebbing tide, turned her head towards Sewell's Point, 
where she anchored for the night, with the intention of 
renewing her dread work on the following morning, after 
one of the most disastrous days in the history of the 
Federal navy. 

In selecting the destruction of the " Cumberland " by 
the " Merrimac " as the subject of this painting, the artist 
showed his usual good judgment. It was one of the 
earliest as well as most startling incidents of the entire 
war, and in its efifect in revolutionizing the construction 
not only of our ships, but those of the world, easily holds 
first place in all naval history. The picture is wonder- 
fully painted and dramatically handled and is considered 
by some critics the most interesting of the series. 

The huge, truncated bulk of the Confederate ram is 

90 



shown in the act of plunging her prow through the 
wooden hull of her opponent in the teeth of a broadside 
of fire and shell. The contrast of colors and values is 
forcibly expressed; the black soft coal smoke from the 
single stack of the " Merrimac " drifts forward and en- 
velopes her antagonist as the cuttle-fish darkens the 
water that it may more easily destroy its victim. 

An examination of this painting is its best description. 
It is almost impossible to paint in words the scene which 
the great artist has here perpetuated with his brush. The 
water is incomparable and the eflfect of the shipping as a 
background, the bright afternoon sun, with the stars and 
stripes on the " Cumberland," and the stars and bars, 
the emblem of the Confederacy, on the stern of the death- 
dealing Southern monster, the crowded deck of the 
" Cumberland," in contrast with the apparently unmanned 
craft of the enemy, all add to the thrilling and vivid effect 
of the extraordinary combat itself. 

When the news of the destruction wrought by the 
" Merrimac " reached the North the general consterna- 
tion was indescribable. At a hastily called Cabinet meet- 
ing the then Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, is 
reported to have said : " The ' Merrimac ' will change 
the whole character of the war; she will destroy every 
naval vessel ; she will lay all seaboard cities under con- 
tribution; not unlikely we may have a shell or cannon 
ball from one of her guns in the White House before we 
leave this room." But the fate of the " Merrimac " was 
sealed, for while she was being moulded out of the old 
Federal hulk into the terrifying ram, with great inge- 
nuity, by Constructor John L. Porter, with the assistance 
of Chief Engineer William P. Williamson, after some 
rough drawings prepared by Lieutenant John N. Brook, 
who originated the idea of her construction, all then of 
the Confederate navy — through a strange coincidence a 
genius had been at work in the North perfecting the 

91 



world-renowned little " Monitor," which was soon to 
meet the formidable Southern iron-clad in battle, the 
history of which is suggested by the next painting of the 
series. It is also strange that in two of the most noted 
dramas in the records of our navy, the one above re- 
counted, and that, already referred to, in which Lieutenant 
Hobson later bore so heroic a part, the most conspicuous 
objects were vessels which were both known as the 
" Merrimac." The valor of Lieutenant Morris, in the 
part which he bore in the defence of the " Cumberland," 
has been immortalized not only through this canvas, but 
also through a special message of Abraham Lincoln to 
Congress under date of December lo, 1862, as follows: 

" In conformity to the law of July 16, 1862, I most 
cordially recommend that Lieutenant-Commander George 
U. Morris, United States Navy, receive a vote of thanks 
of Congress for the determined valor and heroism dis- 
played in his defence of the United States ship-of-war 
' Cumberland,' temporarily under his command, in the 
naval engagement at Hampton Roads on the 8th March, 
1862, with the rebel iron-clad steam frigate ' Merrimac' " 

92 



THE WHITE SQUADRON'S 
FAREWELL SALUTE 

To the Body of 
CAPTAIN JOHN ERICSSON 



{New York Bay, August 25, i8po) 



XII. 



THE WHITE squadron's FAREWELL SALUTE TO THE BODY 
OF CAPTAIN JOHN ERICSSON. 

New York Bay, August 25, 1890.* 

No more fitting funeral cortege could have been de- 
vised than the one which, on August 25, 1890, conveyed 
to Sweden, to their last resting-place, the remains of the 
great engineer, John Ericsson, whose inventive genius 
had clad the wooden navies of the world in armor of 
impenetrable iron and steel. Little had he dreamt when, 
in 1839, at the age of thirty-six (he was born at Verm- 
land, Sweden, on July 31, 1803) he came to the United 
States in one of the old wooden ships of that day after a 
weary journey of many weeks — as yet comparatively un- 
known to fame — that at the time of his death, on March 
8, 1889, in the city of New York, almost twenty-seven 
years to a day after the epoch-making battle of his 
" Monitor " with the " Merrimac," his name would be on 
every tongue in every land, and that the Government of 
the United States would deem it an honor to place the 
magnificent protected cruiser " Baltimore " of the United 
States Navy at the disposal of his native country on his 
farewell journey from our shores to his long home, amid 
the salutes, to their flag-ship, of the other giants of the 
White Squadron and the reverent tokens of grief and 
respect displayed on all the shipping in the harbor, as the 
* About four and one-half feet long by about three feet high. 
95 



funeral convoy slowly plied her way towards the ocean, 
with the flags of Sweden and the United States waving 
at half mast over her decks. 

It is this impressive panorama which the artist spreads 
before us in this canvas, which was the sensation of the 
Spring exhibition of 1891 at the National Academy of 
Design in New York. In this picture he has delineated 
details of the shipping from sketches made by himself at 
the time and a careful study of our war vessels, as holds 
likewise true of the next succeeding and last picture of 
this series. ' There is something impressively grand and 
solemn about this painting, associated as it is with the 
story of the great inventor. The sky is superb, and the 
water has that realistic motion without turbulence which 
only Edward Moran could depict, while the white gleam- 
mg sister ships of the " Baltimore " in the background on 
the right, the shipping in the harbor of all descriptions 
and sizes in more sombre hue on the left, and the Statue 
of Liberty looming up in the rear, stand like sentinels on 
guard as the great white cruiser, with its flags at half 
mast and its stacks sending forth, like a veil of mourning, 
a cloud of black smoke — ploughs with foam encircled 
prow majestically through the water, like a great living, 
breathing, moving thing. 

As this creation of the artist perpetuates the tribute of 
national gratitude to the great inventor of the first " Mon- 
itor," so, it may be said, a fitting tribute has been paid to 
the picture itself through its reproduction in a superb 
etching by another great American artist, his own 
brother, Thomas Moran. 

That the United States Navy should take so deep an 
interest in paying the last honors to John Ericsson, with 
an Admiral of the Navy, Daniel L. Braine, superintend- 
ing the ceremonies, and a future Admiral, Winfield Scott 
Schley, commanding the funeral convoy, is not surpris- 
ing, for to Ericsson it owed not only the bomb-proof 

96 



floating fortresses of the ocean, but the screw propeller, 
first applied in the construction of the United States man- 
of-war " Princeton," with propelling machinery under the 
water line out of the reach of shot. The first steam fire- 
engine ever constructed in the United States was also the 
work of Ericsson in 1841, and many and varied were the 
other inventions of his creative brain. But the greatest 
service rendered by Ericsson was in the construction of 
the " Monitor," not only on account of the immediate, 
almost inestimable benefit which it conferred in saving 
the United States Navy from destruction by the Confed- . 
erate iron-clad " Merrimac," in 1862, but also, still more, 
in view of the impetus which it gave to the development 
of marine craft to their present perfection and in almost 
revolutionizing the entire science of naval warfare. 

When, at 8 o'clock on March 9, 1862, the " Merrimac," 
after the havoc which she had wrought with the Federal 
ships on the evening before, including the burning of the 
" Congress " and the sinking of the " Cumberland," 
steamed out from the shore in order to continue her work 
of destruction — which contemplated successively the an- 
nihilation of the " Minnesota," the " Roanoke " and the 
" St. Lawrence," and would thus clear the way for her 
intended attack on the capital of the nation — she was 
surprised to discover a diminutive craft of peculiar con- 
struction, almost sunk beneath the water line, with a 
strange-looking iron turret in the centre, steaming boldly 
towards her from out the shadow of the powerful frigate 
" Minnesota." The " Monitor " had sailed from New 
York Harbor on March 6th, in tow of a tugboat, to brave 
the waters of the Atlantic, although she was originally 
designed only for smooth inland waters. Before she had 
passed Sandy Hook she received urgent despatches to 
hurry to Washington and, after inconceivable hardships 
in the towering seas of the Atlantic coast, arrived off 
Fortress Monroe about 9 o'clock in the evening of 

97 



March 8th, where she heard for the first time of the depre- 
dations of the " Merrimac " and witnessed the final de- 
struction of the " Congress " amid lurid flames and the 
bursting of her own shells. Though worn out and dis- 
heartened in their own struggle for life with the tempestu- 
ous billows of the ocean on this, her first trial trip of 
thirty-six hours from New York until she reached the 
side of the " Minnesota," the crew of the " Monitor," en- 
couraged and reassured by its heroic commander, Lieu- 
tenant John L. Worden, prepared for the expected combat 
with their redoubtable opponent. 

The eyes not only of the men in the shipping and on 
shore, both Union and Confederate, but of the whole 
country, were anxiously centred on the two iron-clads as 
they approached each other, and the little " Monitor " 
hardly seemed a match for the huge craft of the Confed- 
erates, who looked with contempt upon the diminutive 
" cheese box," as they called it, which dared to take up 
the gage of battle with their formidable " Merrimac." 
Soon, however, it became apparent that the prowess of 
the little Union craft had been entirely underestimated, 
and in the combat which ensued the very smallness of the 
" Monitor " gave her a great advantage, in the swiftness 
of her movements, over her gigantic opponent, not unlike 
an undersized but agile and skilful athlete in encounter 
with a large and lumbering, though more powerful, an- 
tagonist. Lieutenant Worden was the hero of the occa- 
sion in the rapidity of his manoeuvring, while Lieutenant 
Jones, now in command of the " Merrimac," was sur- 
prised to find that his shot made no impression on the 
" Monitor." After more than two hours of incessant 
fighting, Lieutenant Worden having been temporarily 
blinded through the powder from an exploding shell 
which struck a sight-hole in the pilot-house of the " Mon- 
itor," through which he was watching the enemy, its 
command devolved upon Lieutenant Greene. As in the 

98 



ensuing confusion the " Monitor " had drifted into shoal 
water, where the " Merrimac " could not follow, the lat- 
ter ship retired to the shore, and although refitted and 
repaired for further combat she did not again meet the 
" Monitor " in battle, and, on the evacuation of Norfolk 
by the Confederates on the loth of May following, they 
consigned her to destruction. 

The courage of Lieutenant Worden in the handling of 
the novel and untested craft under his command, and his 
brave words — even when blinded and wounded by the 
powder and particles from the shells of the enemy and 
suffering intense pain — when he was told that the " Min- 
nesota " had been saved : " Then I can die happy," — stamp 
him as worthy of a place in the long list of our naval 
heroes. 

It is not surprising that Abraham Lincoln, with his 
quick perception of genuine merit, caused the following 
communication to be sent to Lieutenant Worden : 

" Navy Department, March 15, 1862. 

" Lieutenant John L. Worden, United States Navy, 
Commanding United States Steamer ' Moni- 
tor,' Washington. 
" Sir: 

" The naval action which took place on the loth * inst. 
between the ' Monitor ' and ' Merrimac ' at Hampton 
Roads, when your vessel, with two guns, engaged a 
powerful armored steamer of at least eight guns, and 
after a few hours' conflict repelled her formidable antag- 
onist, has excited general admiration and received the 
applause of the whole country. 

" The President directs me, while earnestly and deeply 
sympathizing with you in the injuries which you have 
sustained, but which it is believed are but temporary, to 

* This, it would seem, ought to be March 9th. 
99 



thank you and your command for the heroism you have 
displayed and the great service you have rendered. 

" The action of the loth and the performance, power, 
and capabiHties of the ' Monitor ' must effect a radical 
change in naval warfare. 

" Flag-Officer Goldsborough, in your absence, will be 
furnished by the Department with a copy of this letter of 
thanks and instructed to cause it to be read to the officers 
and crew of the ' Monitor.' 

" I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

"Gideon Welles." 

The President followed this up with a special message 
to Congress on December 8, 1862, as follows: 

" To the Senate and House of Representatives: 

" In conformity to the law of July 16, 1862, I most 
cordially recommend that Commander John L. Worden, 
United States Navy, receive a vote of thanks of Con- 
gress for the eminent skill and gallantry exhibited by 
him in the late remarkable battle between the United 
States iron-clad steamer ' Monitor,' under his command, 
and the rebel iron-clad steamer ' Merrima'c,' in March last. 
" The thanks of Congress for his services on the occa- 
sion referred to w^ere tendered by a resolution approved 
July II, 1862, but the recommendation is now specially 
made in order to comply with the requirements of the 
ninth section of the act of July 16, 1862, which is in the 
following words, viz. : 

" * That any line officer of the Navy or Marine Corps 
may be advanced one grade if upon recommendation of 
the President by name he receives the thanks of Congress 
for highly distinguished conduct in conflict with the 
enemy or for extraordinary heroism in the line of his 
profession.' 

" Abraham Lincoln." 



In this fight the " Monitor " had been struck twenty- 
two times without appreciable efifect, the deepest indenta- 
tion having been made by a shot that penetrated the 
iron on her side to the depth of four inches. On the 
" Merrimac " ninety-seven indentations of shot were 
found, twenty of which were from the ii-inch guns of 
the " Monitor," which had shattered six of the top layers 
of her iron plates. 

On the 29th of December following, the " Monitor " 
herself was lost, having been foundered and sunk with 
sixteen of her crew, in a heavy gale, a few miles south of 
Cape Hatteras. But the test to which the " Monitor " 
had been subjected in her battle with the " Merrimac " 
proved beyond doubt that iron was destined to take the 
place of wood in the construction of our men-of-war 
thereafter, and the confidence of John Ericsson in the 
ultimate success of his experiment, after many discour- 
agements and rebuffs on the part of the naval authorities, 
was fully justified in its final results, and the honors 
which the nation showered upon him in the evening of 
his life, and the tribute which it paid to his genius after 
his death, were merited by him quite as much as the 
perpetuation of his memory through this stirring canvas 
of the great artist, as is also the memory, in the second 
painting of this series, of that other Erickson, his an- 
cestor, who, almost a thousand years before, was the 
first white man known to have set foot on American soil. 



RETURN OF THE CONQUERORS 



Typifying Our Victory in the Late 
Spanish-American War 



(September 29, 1899) 



XIII. 

RETURN OF THE CONQUERORS. TYPIFYING OUR VICTORY IN 
THE LATE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR, SEPTEMBER 29, 1 899.* 

As a fitting close to the grand pictorial illustration of 
our marine history, this canvas represents one of the most 
magnificent pageants ever seen on our waters, in com- 
memoration of the victorious close of the last great war, 
in which our navy added fresh leaves to its laurel wreath 
of heroic achievement. It, at the same time, depicts the 
culminating stage in the evolution of naval construction 
from the time when the Norsemen in their drakkars, and 
Columbus in his caravels, braved the perils of the ocean, 
until the steel-clad battleships of Dewey and Schley and 
Sampson met in conflict the no less formidable floating 
fortresses of Cervera and Montojo. It is a picture of 
to-day, with the well-defined outlines of the Statue of 
Liberty in allegorical suggestion at the mouth of the 
great river up which the little " Half Moon " first sailed, 
also on a September day, just two hundred and ninety 
years before. It suggests — in the great, grim, steel-clad 
leviathans of the ocean steaming up the river, with their 
powerful armament and each representing millions of 
dollars in its construction, along the shores of the second 
largest city in the world, and with flags and banners fly- 
ing proudly from every mast and spar — not only the 
victory of our arms but the growth of the nation, from 
the sparse settlements in the days of the Pilgrim Fathers 

* Four and one-half feet long by about three feet high. 
105 



to a population of 80,000,000 souls, and from the thirteen 
little struggling provinces, at the outbreak of the Revolu- 
tion, to the forty-five great States and four Territories of 
the Union, with its possessions even beyond the confines 
of the continent — imperial in its power and greatness, not 
dreamt of even when, only about a century before, Paul 
Jones and Decatur and Captain Reid performed the feats 
of daring which are immortalized in the earlier of these 
paintings. 

It typifies, as the artist himself points out in his title, 
our conquering arms — in the very motion of the proud 
battleships, as in majestic array, representing both the 
Pacific and North Atlantic squadrons, they seem to sweep 
gradually forward and onward within full view. If Mr. 
Moran had never painted anything else, this picture 
would stamp him as a surpassing genius. The grouping 
of the great vessels and the indication of their vast num- 
ber, the brilliancy of the water and the whole coloring are 
matchless. It suggests in the proud procession of the 
ships-of-war, in perspective, as far back as the eye can 
reach, a gathering of almost the entire navy, and is in 
that respect far more than a mere photographic represen- 
tation of the actual occurrence. In this picture he repre- 
sents the " Olympia " as the principal object, the nearest 
in the foreground, her hull in gleaming white, with the 
suggestion of the figure of Admiral Dewey standing on 
the bridge, with her sister ships of like hue following in 
her wake; while another line, on the left of the picture, 
headed by the " New York " and " Brooklyn," and with 
Admirals Sampson and Schley on board, appears in more 
sombre hue, only second in importance, however, to the 
" Olympia." Such a picture could only be produced by an 
artist of the most poetic and imaginative instincts as well 
as a close student of the actualities; for while it is to a 
certain extent allegoric of the event which it records 
and the memories connected with it, nothing could be 

106 



more real or faithful than the reproduction of our iron- 
clads, with all the detail of armament, turret, tackle, an- 
chor, port-holes and even the national coat of arms on 
the prow. Even the signal of the " Olympia," " Remem- 
ber the Maine," and the answering signal of the " Brook- 
lyn," " The Maine is avenged and Cuba is free," can be 
seen flying from their yards. 

The events which are recalled by this painting are so 
recent that it would seem superfluous to refer to them at 
all, and yet, in continuation of the historic outline pre- 
sented in these pages, it may be of interest to record that 
the battle of Manila was fought on May i, 1898; that not 
a single life was lost on the American side and only a 
few men wounded, without any material injury to the 
American ships, consisting of four cruisers and two gun- 
boats, while the whole Spanish fleet, under the command 
of Admiral Montojo, consisting of seven cruisers and 
five gunboats, was destroyed, with the exception of two, 
and these were captured, and that our ships, in addition, 
silenced and captured the formidable shore batteries on 
Cavite Point. Furthermore, that our naval operations 
came to a close oflf Santiago Harbor on July 3, 1898, 
through the destruction or capture by our fleet — under 
the command of Admirals Schley and Sampson, consist- 
ing of four battleships, one armored cruiser and two con- 
verted yachts, one of them the " Gloucester," under the 
command of the intrepid Richard Wainwright — of the 
entire Spanish fleet, consisting of four powerful armored 
cruisers of the highest class and two torpedo boat 
destroyers, under the command of Admiral Cervera. 

Space forbids even a passing reference to the instances 
of individual heroism displayed during this war by the 
officers and men of our ships, as for example that of 
Lieutenant Richmond P. Hobson, all of which are con- 
jured up by a contemplation of this painting. It is also 
impossible to refer at length to the reception itself to 

107 



Admiral Dewey and the other officers and men of our 
fleets, of which the naval procession constituted only one 
feature ; but no eye-witness can ever forget the march of 
the returning victors in the land parade on September 30, 
1899, as it passed under that masterpiece of American 
sculpture, the arch located at Madison Square. 

There were also some touching incidents connected 
with this celebration. Among them, and as suggested by 
this picture, should be mentioned the fact that a sailor by 
the name of Bartholomew Diggins presented Admiral 
Dewey with the blue flag of Admiral Farragut, which 
had been in the possession of Diggins, who had served 
with Dewey under Farragut in the Civil War, and this 
flag flew from one of the mast-heads of the " Olympia " 
as she steamed up the river in the van of the magnificent 
array. 

How doubly glorious will appear this splendid ovation 
to our heroes immortalized in this picture, if the war, 
from which they are shown returning as conquerors, shall 
result in a full realization of the noble motive, which in- 
spired it, of liberation and not of conquest, and we may 
in patriotic pride address Columbia in the words of 
Timothy Dwight: 

" To conquest and slaughter let Europe aspire ; 
Whelm nations in blood, and wrap cities in fire; 
Thy heroes the rights of mankind shall defend, 
And triumph pursue them, and glory attend ! " 



With this picture the artist closes the commemoration 
of our naval achievements in the four great periods of 
our history, the War of the Revolution, the War of 1812, 
the Civil War, and the Spanish-American War of 1898, 
to which the last six pictures of the series are devoted, 
as the preceding six illustrate the dawn of our history 

108 



from the first landing of the white man to the settlement 
of the Pilgrim Fathers — preceding all of which is the 
mysterious and unfathomable past symbolized by the 
trackless " Ocean," the first of these paintings. 

From the time that Eirek the Red sailed to the bleak 
shores of Greenland down to the brilliant exploit of Ad- 
miral Dewey in the Philippine Islands, how true it is, in 
view of each and every one of the events immortalized 
in this unequalled series of paintings, that, in the words 
of Bishop Berkeley, 

" Westward the course of empire takes its way ! " 




Z09 



INDEX. 



Agreement of Confederation, 
written on board " May- 
flower," 6i, 62 

America, Early Discoveries of, 

33, 34 

American Flag, first Recogni- 
tion of, painting, description 
of, 68; Designing and Adop- 
tion of Present Form, 81. 

Armaments: "Armstrong," 79; 
Modern Battleships, 68; 
" Ranger," 68 

" Armstrong," Brig, Engaging 
the British Fleet, painting, 
description of, 82, 83 

Bainbridge, Captain, 73 
" Baltimore," Cruiser, 95 
Braine, Admiral, 96 
Brig " Armstrong " Engaging 
the British Fleet, painting, 
description of, 82, 83 
" Brooklyn," Cruiser, 106, 107 
Buchanan, Commodore. 88, 89 
Burning of Frigate " Philadel- 
phia," painting, description 
of, 75. 76 
Byron, Lord, quotation from, 29 

Caravels, 40, 105 

Castelar, Emilio, quotation 
from, 41, 42 

Cervera, Admiral. 105, 107 

Chicago, Columbian Exposi- 
tion, 40, 80 

Columbus, Christopher, 39 to 
43 ; Death, 42 ; Transfer of 
Remains, 43 

Columbus, Debarkation of, 
painting, description of, 41, 
42; "Santa Maria," "Nina" 
and " Pinta," painting, de- 
scription of, 41, 42 



Compact of Pilgrim Fathers, 

61, 62 
" Congress," Frigate, 88, 89, 90 
Constitution of United States, 

Preamble, 62 
Cowper, quotation from, 69 
" Cumberland," The, 87 to 92, 
95. 97'- Sinking of, by the 
" Merrimac," painting, de- 
scription of, 90, 91 

Debarkation of Columbus, 
painting, description of, 41, 
42 

Decatur, Stephen, 10, 74, 106; 
Birth, Death, 75; Sword, 74; 
Toast to our Country, 74 

De Soto, Ferdinand, 47 to 49; 
Birth, Death, 47; Expedition 
of, 47 to 49; Midnight Mass 
over the Body of. painting, 
description of, 48, 49 

Dewey, George, Admiral, 10, 
105, 106, 107, 109 

Drake, quotation from, 67 

Drakkars, 35, 105 

Eirek the Red, 33, 34, 109 
Embarkation of Pilgrims, 

painting, description of, 60 
Ericsson, John, Birth. Death, 

95 ; " Monitor," 92, 97 to loi ; 

White Squadron's Farewell 

Salute to body of, painting, 

description of, 95, 96 
Erickson, Lief, Landing in 

New World, 33, 34; painting, 

description of, 35, 36, lOl 
Esquimos, 34 
Everett, Edward, quotation 

from oration on the Pilgrims, 

60, 61 



Exhibition of Paintings of Ed- 
ward Moran, 9, 18, 19 

Farewell Salute to John Erics- 
son, painting, description of, 

95. 96 

Farragut, Admiral, 108 

Fayal, 79, 81, 83 

First Recognition of American 
Plag, painting, description of, 
68, 69 

Fiske, John, 40 

Flag, United States, 67, 68; 
First Recognition of, paint- 
ing, description of, 68, 69; 
Captain Reid, 81 ; Resolutions 
of Congress authorizing, 67, 
8r 

Florida, 47, 48 

Greenland, Settlement of, 33, 34 

" Half-Moon," ship of Hudson, 

53. 105 

Hamilton, James. 16 

Hemans, Felicia, quotation 
from, 62, 63 

Herald, New York, quotation 
from, 9 

Hobson, Richmond Pearson, 
10, 73. 92 

Holland, 53, 54. 59 

Hopkins, Admiral, 27 

Hudson, Henry. 53 to 55; En- 
tering New York Bay, paint- 
ing, description of, 55 

Hudson River, Discovery of, 54 

Iceland, 33, 34, 36 

Iron versus Wood, Sinking of 
" Cumberland " by " Merri- 
mac," painting, description of, 
90,91 

Jackson, Andrew, Defence of 
New Orleans. 82 ; Special 
Message to Congress about 
burning of frigate " Philadel- 
phia," 75. 

Jefferson, Thomas, Special 
Message to Congress about 
Lieutenant Decatur, 74 



Jones, John Paul, 10, 68, 106; 
Birth and Death, 69; Letter 
to Naval Committee, 68 

La Molte Piquet, Admiral, 68 
Landing of Lief Erickson in 
the New World, painting, 
description of, 35, 36, loi 
Lincoln, Abraham, Special 
Message to Congress about 
Lieutenant George U. Mor- 
ris, 92 ; about Lieutenant 
John Worden, 100 ; Com- 
mendation of Lieutenant 
John L. Worden, 99, 100 
Litigation about thirteen paint- 
ings, 8 
Lloyd, Commodore, 79, 82 
Louisiana Purchase, 10, 49, 82; 
Exposition, 50 

Manila Bay. Battle of, 107 

" Mayflower," 59, 60, 61 

" Merrimac," The, Confederate 

Ram. 87 to 92. 95, 97 to loi ; 

of Spanish- American War, 

92 
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 

9 

Midnight Mass over the Body 
of P'erdinand De Soto, paint- 
ing, description of, 48, 49 

Mississippi River, Discovery of, 
48, 49 

" Monitor," The, 92, 95, 97 to 
lot 

Montojo. Admiral, 105 ,107 

Moran, Annette, 8, 20; Death. 
21 ; Paintings, 20 

Moran, Edward, 15 to 21 ; 
Academics, Clubs, Societies, 

16, 17; Birth, Death, 15; 
Marriage, 8, 20; Paintings of, 

17, 18 

Moran, Thomas, etching by, 96 
Morris, George U., 10, 88, 89, 
92 

Nantucket, 34 

Napoleon, Louis, Arbitration 

about Brig " Armstrong," 81 
Navy, Ships of, 68. 73, 74, 79. 

82, 88, 90, 97; Improvement, 

87. 97. 105 



New Orleans, 82 
New York, City of, 54 
" New York," Cruiser, 106 
Norse Costumes, 35 
Norsemen, ss, 34, 40, 105 
Norse ships, 35 
Norway, S3 

Ocean, The, painting, descrip- 
tion of, 10, 27, 28, 109 
" Olympia," The, 106, 107, 108 

Paintings of Edward Moran, 
partial list of, 17, 18 

Parmentier, Antoine Augustin, 
20 

" Philadelphia," Frigate. Burn- 
ing of, painting, description 
of, 75. 76 

Pilgrims, 59 to 63, 109; Com- 
pact in " Mayflower," 61 ; 
Embarkation of, painting,, 
description of, 60 

Plymouth Rock, 59 

Portuguese Government, 79, 80 

Quiberon, 10, 68 

" Ranger," 68 

Reid, Capt. Samuel Chester, 10, 

79, 106; Birth, Death, 82; 

Long Tom, 79, 80, 81 ; 

Sword, 81 ; United States 

Flag, 8r 
Return of the Conquerors, 

painting, description of, 105, 

106, 107 

Sampson, William T., 10, 105, 
106 

" Santa Maria," " Nina " and 
" Pinta," painting, descrip- 
tion of, 41, 42 

Santiago Harbor, Battle of, 107 

Schiller, Friedrich, quotation 
from, 43 

Schley, Winfield Scott, 10, 96, 
105, 106 

Ships of Captain Bainbridge, 
73; Columbus, 39, 40; Com- 
modore Decatur, 74 ; De Soto. 
47: Dewey, 106, 107; Henry 
Hudson. S3 ; Paul Jones, 68 ; 
Commodore Lloyd, 79; Com- 



mander George U. Morris, 
88; Norsemen, 35; Pilgrim 
Fathers, 59; Captain Samuel 
C. Reid, 79 ; Sampson, Schley, 
106, 107; Lieutenant VVorden, 
98 

Sinking of the " Cumberland " 
by the " Merrimac," painting, 
description of, 90, 91 

Southampton, 60 

Spanish-American War, 105 to 
109; Return of Conquerors, 
painting, description of, 105, 
106, 107 

Statue of Liberty, 18, 96, 105 

Taylor, Bayard, quotation from, 
36 

Thirteen, number connected 
with events in history of the 
United States, 9, 10, 67 

Thirteen Paintings, Exhibition 
of, 9, 27 ; General Descrip- 
tion, 7 to II, 68; Litigation 
about, 8; Sizes of, 27, 3^, 39, 
47, 53, 59, 67, 73, 79, 87, 95, 
105 

Tripoli, 73, 74 

United States, Constitution of, 
62 ; Number of States, 9, 67, 

81, 106; Population, 106 

Vinland, 34, 36 
Virginia, Colony of, 59 

Wainvvright, Richard, 10, 107 
Wars : Civil, 82, 87, 108 ; /S/2, 

82, 108; Revolution, 67, 108; 
Spanish-American, 43, 108 

Webber, Paul, 16 

Welles, Gideon, Alarm about 
" Merrimac," 91 ; Letter to 
Lieutenant John L. Worden, 
99, 100 

West Indies, origin of name, 

43 
White Squadron's Farewell Sa- 
lute to the Body of Capt. 
John Ericsson, painting, de- 
scription of, 95, 96 
Worden, John L., 10, 98, 99 
World's Fair, Chicago, 40, 80 



113 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



011 529 683 8 





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